Parts Intelligence
Service parts management for OEMs and machine builders
If you build machines, you also sell the parts that keep them running. Service parts management is how that business runs: identifying the part a customer asks for, letting customers find it themselves, pricing every part from what it should cost, keeping the business going as machines age, and keeping the sale rather than losing it to someone else.
What service parts management covers for an OEM
Service parts management is the business of supplying spare parts for the machines your company builds: identifying what the customer needs, quoting it, pricing it and delivering it, for as long as the machines run, fifteen years after the sale and more.
This page is for the side that sells. If you buy spare parts to keep your own plant running, your page is spare parts management.
Several people share the work. The head of aftermarket owns the parts revenue. The parts desk identifies and quotes. Technical documentation keeps the catalogs. E-commerce or IT run the portal and the shop. A pricing manager, where there is one, sets the prices.
The boundary is the systems you already run. The catalog system publishes the parts lists and exploded views, the shop takes the order, and the ERP books it. This page is about getting the customer to the right part, at a fair price, fast. Partium Find stays inside that boundary. Find searches your own catalog and works beside your ERP and CMMS. For OEMs, it runs as a search inside the parts portal or shop you already have.
Five practices of service parts management for machine builders
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Identify the part the customer asks for
From whatever the customer sends to the part number
The parts desk rarely gets a part number. It gets a few words in an email, a worn label, a code from a tag, a line from the machine’s parts list, sometimes a photo. Good is getting from any of these to the right part number in one step, not three emails. Where it breaks, a request takes days of back-and-forth, and the desk depends on one expert.
In Partium Find, each is a way in:
Type what you know: a few words, a function, part of a description. Find searches by meaning, not by exact naming.
Scan the label or nameplate, and Find returns results from the text on it.
Scan a barcode or QR code to go straight to the part.
Use the bill of materials to narrow down a part that is hard to name.
Take a photo of the part. Find matches it even when the part is worn, dirty or obfuscated.
Read more: In the Aftermarket, the Right Part Is the Customer Experience · From Spare Parts Inquiry to Quote, Without the Second Round
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Let customers find it themselves
Search in the customer's words, not the catalog's
A parts portal is only self-service if its search finds the part from the words the customer types. The customer types “hydraulic cylinder clamping unit”; the catalog says “ZYL HYD 80/56 SP”. A keyword search returns nothing, and the customer calls the hotline or orders elsewhere. Good is a search that goes by what the part is, inside the portal and shop you already run.
Partium Find searches that way:
Semantic Multi-Modal Search finds the part from the words you have, even when the record behind it is messy.
Read more: Why Your Parts Portal Search Returns Zero Results · Self-Service Spare Parts Ordering Starts With Sorting the Hotline’s Calls
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Price every part from what it should cost
A reference for every price, not a markup from years ago
Most spare-parts prices were set once, as cost plus a markup, and rarely revisited. Over the years they drift both ways. Common parts, the ones customers can buy elsewhere, end up above what customers will accept, and those orders go elsewhere. Parts only you supply end up below what customers would pay, and the margin stays on the table. Good pricing gives every part a reference for what it should cost and reviews prices as costs and the market move, the furthest-off parts first.
In Partium Cockpit, this is Spare Part Pricing:
Sets each spare part’s price against what it should cost.
Shows which prices sit above or below that reference.
Reprices as the market moves.
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Keep the business going as machines age
Identify from the part itself when the documents are gone
The oldest machines in the installed base bring the hardest requests: drawings on paper, a parts list from a revision nobody kept, a nameplate painted over. Good is identifying from the bill of materials and the part itself, not only from documents. Where it breaks is the day the one person who knew retires.
In Find, two ways in carry the weight here:
Use the bill of materials to narrow down a part that is hard to name.
Take a photo of the part. Find matches it even when the part is worn, dirty or obfuscated.
Read more: When the Parts Expert Retires: Saving the Parts Desk’s Tribal Knowledge
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Keep the sale
A quick, certain answer at every door
A customer with a stopped machine buys from whoever answers first. When the desk is slow or the portal returns nothing, the order goes to someone else, and the parts revenue the installed base should bring leaks away unseen. Good is a quick, certain answer at every door: the parts desk, the portal and the technician on site. Where it breaks, a slow quote loses to a faster one. ENGEL’s parts portal, below, shows what that looks like.
Read more: First-Time Fix Rate: Get the Right Spare Part on the Van Before It Leaves
An OEM parts portal in the field: ENGEL
ENGEL
ENGEL builds injection molding machines and runs its own parts portal for the customers who operate them. It put Partium Find into that portal. At ENGEL, Partium’s AI-based spare part search in the ENGEL parts portal lets technicians find parts independently — with fewer part-search hotline calls, more self-served transactions in the shop, and more requests for quotes.
Where to start: four steps
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Count a month of requests.
How many parts-desk requests needed more than one round with the customer before the quote?
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Read the empty searches.
List the portal searches that returned nothing, in the customer’s own words.
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Pick one machine family,
one with a large installed base and plenty of requests.
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See it on a catalog.
Book a demo on our demo catalog or a sample of your own. Nothing to prepare.
What is a faster parts desk worth to your aftermarket business? Try it out for yourself in the ROI calculator.
One platform for the part, inside the systems you run
For an OEM, Partium Find is the search in the parts portal, the shop and at the parts desk. Cockpit is where your team works on the catalog, the stock and the price. Partium Find is the separate product for identifying a part in the field.
Partium Agent runs beneath every feature of Cockpit and Find. You work in the product; Agent does the work underneath.
More on Parts Intelligence. You buy Partium Cockpit, Partium Find, or both. Partium Agent comes with either and is not sold on its own.
The product for your parts business is on the page for the aftermarket.
Questions about service parts management for OEMs
What is service parts management?
Running the business of selling spare parts for the machines a company builds, from the customer’s request to the right part at the right price. Partium works on it with two products.
Cockpit is where your team works on the catalog, the stock and the price. Partium Find is the separate product for identifying a part in the field.
How does a parts desk identify the part a customer asks for?
From whatever the customer has: a few words, the label, a code, the machine’s bill of materials or a photo. Each should lead to the part number in one step.
Scan the label or nameplate, and Find returns results from the text on it.
How can an OEM increase aftermarket sales?
Start by keeping the sales you already have. Customers who cannot find the part in your portal, or wait days for a quote, buy elsewhere.
At ENGEL, Partium’s AI-based spare part search in the ENGEL parts portal lets technicians find parts independently — with fewer part-search hotline calls, more self-served transactions in the shop, and more requests for quotes.
How should an OEM price its spare parts?
From a reference for what each part should cost, not a markup set years ago. Review the parts customers can buy elsewhere first.
Price every spare part you sell from what it should cost, and reprice as the market moves.
Does Partium replace our parts portal or shop?
No. Your catalog system, portal, shop and ERP keep their jobs.
Find searches your own catalog and works beside your ERP and CMMS. For OEMs, it runs as a search inside the parts portal or shop you already have.
What does service parts management software do?
It gets the people who sell parts from a customer’s request to the right part and a fair price, at the desk, in the portal or on site. The search has to work from the customer’s words.
Type what you know: a few words, a function, part of a description. Find searches by meaning, not by exact naming.
See it on a catalog like yours
See it on our demo catalog, or on a sample of your own. There is nothing to prepare.