Spreading business risks through equipment sharing
Even though equipment sharing is known to be a smart and sustainable method to manage equipment needs, it is often overlooked. The reason is typically the lack of practical platform available for managing the equipment needs from other organisations. The other reason might be the lack of communication channel to organise the sharing.
However, it’s obvious that in sharing, there lies a huge potential for cost-efficiency and stronger partnerships within a community.
One of the most important improvements asset sharing enables, is risk mitigation regarding equipment purchases. By allowing access to a wider set of equipment owned by others, it is possible for one organisation to limit their investments to business-critical assets only. Scaling assets to a temporary need becomes easy with limited risk.
By building strategic partnerships around equipment sharing, it becomes possible to source business-critical assets with a reduced risk of overly spending or investing in incorrect or non-optimal assets.
Equipment sharing - Case example
Let’s look at a concrete example of how the sharing would work within different industries.
Let’s imagine a mid-size industrial company (company A) that gets a one-time (or at least the first ever) bigger sales order. However, the company only has two production devices in use and to be able to fulfil the order, they would temporarily need two more. It doesn’t make any sense for one offer to purchase expensive devices which might become idle after a while. It’s much wiser to borrow the devices from a partner in the same industry who might have just a few extra devices to spare for a while. This could be for example a bigger company in the same industry (company B). Perhaps the benefit for company A is knowing that when they need to scale their production, company B can be just the right help.
In the example case, there are multiple risks avoided. Company A avoids the risk of disappointing the end-customer or losing the big order. They also avoid the risk of unnecessary spending to new devices. Company B benefits from the stronger corporate community and collaboration and improves their brand image. In tight situation, they can rely on company A’s help for sure.
How to get started with digital equipment sharing?
Sharing is the key to a more sustainable future.
To explore the possibility and understand the digital tools available, there is a whitepaper available for the topic.
Download whitepaper: Guide to Sustainable Equipment Management
You can also find more information about Trail Sharing platform here.