Manufacturing Reinvented: How Field Service is Becoming the Growth Engine

“I am still making order out of the chaos of reinvention,” said novelist John Le Carré as he crafted yet another Cold War thriller.

The same could be said of modern manufacturing.

The days of simply producing, shipping, and moving on are long gone. Today’s manufacturing landscape is undergoing a radical transformation—driven by economic shocks like the 2008 financial crisis and accelerated by the rise of the industrial internet.

From Making Products to Delivering Outcomes

Manufacturers are evolving beyond the traditional “we make stuff” model. Now, many offer service-based solutions such as equipment financing, maintenance programs, lifecycle consulting, or even outcome-based service contracts. These changes are particularly noticeable among complex equipment manufacturers, who are forming deeper, more strategic relationships with customers. Increasingly, what’s delivered is not just a product, but a service outcome.

This shift is more than cosmetic—it's existential. Product-based business models are giving way to models built around service, relationships, and customer outcomes.

The Critical Skills Gap

But there’s a problem: manufacturing is struggling with a severe skills shortage.

Technological advancements are impressive, but without skilled people, innovation stalls. To stay competitive, manufacturers must attract a new wave of talent—technically capable, socially diverse, and equipped with customer-centric skills more commonly found in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) or finance.

Field Service at the Center of the Revolution

This reinvention doesn’t stop at the factory floor—it reaches deep into field service.

The rise of IoT, remote monitoring, and predictive analytics has certainly made field service more efficient and transparent. But the changes go deeper than tech. The boundaries between product, service, and solution are blurring. As a result, field service can no longer remain a reactive, bolt-on operation—it must be fully integrated into core business functions.

Field service teams are becoming essential to sales, engineering, and customer experience. Their success now depends as much on relationship management as on technical know-how.

Centralized Support and Self-Healing Systems

With real-time data and remote diagnostics, many issues can now be solved centrally. This is prompting some businesses to rethink how they deliver support. In some cases, self-healing technologies are being built directly into products.

As this trend accelerates, support models will shift toward a more unified system, linking central tech support, local field technicians, third-party vendors, and account managers into a cohesive customer service ecosystem.

Global Shifts and Extreme Examples

In Asia-Pacific, a leading industrial robotics provider has flipped its service model—from 60% field and 40% centralized, to 40% field and 60% centralized—thanks to remote service integration. Meanwhile, defense contractors are embedding service teams directly onto naval vessels, offering guaranteed system availability as part of long-term contracts.

These are dramatic examples, but they highlight a larger truth: there is a direct link between emerging technology, evolving customer expectations, and how service organizations must structure themselves.

Field Service is Now a Growth Strategy

Field service is fast becoming a growth driver, not just a support function. This is particularly evident in the push toward “Trusted Advisor” roles, where technicians and service reps play a central part in shaping customer perception and satisfaction.

Balancing deep technical knowledge with strong interpersonal skills is now one of the biggest challenges—and opportunities—for service leaders.

The Path Forward: A Three-Point Plan for Service Leaders

To thrive in this new era, service leaders should take action:

1. Re-evaluate your role in the customer value chain.
   Identify how services can support long-term, sustainable growth.
2. Leverage connectivity and emerging tech.
   Experiment with IoT, predictive maintenance, and remote diagnostics to find new efficiencies and business model opportunities.
3. Adopt an Outside-In perspective.
   Stay ahead by learning from others. Tap into communities like
   Field Service News,
   The Manufacturer,
   The Service Community, or
   take part in servitization programs at institutions like Aston Business School.

As manufacturing reinvents itself, so too must field service. The journey is still unfolding—but one thing is clear: the future of field service will be more strategic, more integrated, and more critical than ever before.

Let’s embrace the reinvention.

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