Investigations on Augmented Reality based maintenance practices within SMEs

The introduction of platforms disrupted many consumer industries. Prominent examples include Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber, who upended their respective industries. Eventually, platforms will also enter capital goods industries and their downstream service businesses. A part of these downstream businesses in capital goods industries are field services. In this conceptual paper, we show how the current field service delivery, which is characterized by static alliances, can be replaced with dynamic platform ecosystems, which are enabled through remote monitoring technology and mobile collaborative augmented reality. We propose a field service platform ecosystem framework by applying platform research fundamentals to the industrial field service businesses.