Customer Integration to Gain Cost Efficiency Alongside Tool's Life Cycle

Abstract Todays efforts to optimize industrial production processes exceedingly focus on tools’ life cycle costs. Toolmaker and its customer are the two entities influencing tools’ life cycle costs. Due to lack of information exchange neither life cycle assessment nor cost efficient life cycles can be realized. An effective lever for penetrating information exchange and therefore gaining cost efficiency alongside tool's life cycle is the integration of the toolmaker into the value creation process of its customer. The so called customer integration succeeds through innovative product-service systems alongside tools’ life cycle networking the value creation processes of toolmaker and tool user. As the findings of research project TEC in this paper practical solutions for realizing customer integration are introduced and measures for gaining life cycle cost efficiency alongside tool's life cycle are explained.