The Buzz 1: “Prior generations took pride in owning products, but current and future generations are very different; they just want to use the product.” (Prof. Carlo Alberto Carnevale Maffe, Bocconi University School of Management) The Buzz 2: “Servitization remains something of an opaque concept for many manufacturers while for others, it is a journey they are already a long way down…the countdown to widespread adoption of some form of advanced services appears to draw nearer…but it can’t be achieved by simply improving or replacing separate legacy business systems and processes.” (fieldservicenews.com) As margins continue to shrink for traditional equipment sales, manufacturers must embrace new business models. One pathway for greater profitability is offering different types of services for assets. These could be a simple break fix, annual contracts, or providing services based on data collected from the assets such as performance benchmarking, predictive maintenance and even outcome or guaranteed performance. How can manufacturers undertake the journey to embrace these new service offerings? What sorts of intelligent technologies and business processes are needed to ensure that such asset-centric, data-centric businesses will be successful? We’ll ask Torsten Welte at SAP, David Lowson at Capgemini and John Maggiore at Collinear Group for their take on Is Service the Solution? The New World for Manufacturers.