The Advanced Services Group is celebrating United Machining as the winner of the Servitization Excellence Award 2026 for Innovative Regional Strategy, recognising an ambitious approach that has put regional markets at the heart of developing advanced services across its global business.
Now in their second year, the Servitization Excellence Awards celebrate manufacturers and individuals demonstrating what excellence in servitization looks like in practice. United Machining will receive its award at the Advanced Services Partnership Autumn Roundtable in Umbertide, Italy, alongside this year’s other recipients.
What sets United Machining’s approach apart is where its advanced services strategy has been shaped. Instead of creating a service model at its Swiss headquarters before rolling it out internationally, the company involved teams from Europe, North America, Southeast Asia Pacific and China in developing the strategy from the outset.
That approach has seen China and Southeast Asia become important testing grounds for new advanced service offers. Rather than replicating a European model, teams have developed propositions around the customer needs and competitive conditions they see within their own markets. The results are already translating into business, with commercially successful pilots in China and new service contracts in Singapore.
Crucially, regional involvement has continued as the strategy has developed. United Machining has worked to ensure that regional teams remain active participants in shaping its direction, creating the potential for ideas and service models developed in Asia to influence opportunities elsewhere in its global business.
Stéphane Cru, Head of Customer Care at United Machining said:
“We want to build service models that set us apart by becoming our customers’ chosen partner. Building service solutions that truly fit each market in our global presence starts with the question: who understands our customers, their needs, and their service culture best? The answer for us has always been clear: our regional Customer Care teams.
“Supported by their Swiss colleagues and ASG throughout this journey, Jenny Qian, Head of China Customer Care, and Chong Seng Kok, Head of APAC Customer Care, have led the way in conceptualizing, testing, and implementing these new Advanced Services – turning new, bold ideas into real business results.”
Jenny Qian, Head of China Customer Care at United Machining, added:
“Our global advanced services strategy has empowered regional teams to tailor service innovation to local customer needs. In China, we launched the Revival Program, an outcome-based service that restores the efficiency and accuracy of older machines. It helps customers manage their investment, unlock capacity and reduce downtime, renewing the value of their equipment and delivering benefits beyond their expectations. Revival has improved customer satisfaction, after-sales performance and team morale, accelerating our shift from reactive support to proactive solutions. It demonstrates how a global servitization ambition can translate into tangible customer value through regional innovation.”
Reflecting on United Machining’s approach, Associate Professor Yang Zhao of Aston Business School said:
“United Machining’s approach to servitization places the diversity of customer needs, competitive pressures and perceptions of value across markets at the heart of value creation and delivery. Local teams are empowered to experiment and shape propositions around their own market conditions, with regional knowledge treated as a valuable source of innovation. This also creates a two-way flow of learning that informs and strengthens United Machining’s global strategy. The combination of global ambition, regional empowerment and practical experimentation makes this a distinctive and impactful servitization strategy.”
The Servitization Excellence Awards were established by the Advanced Services Group to highlight what successful service transformation looks like in practice and give greater visibility to the organisations and people leading it.
Professor Tim Baines, Executive Director of the Advanced Services Group, said:
“Servitization is creating new possibilities for manufacturers, but turning them into reality takes ambition, experimentation and people prepared to lead change within their organisations. Through the Servitization Excellence Awards, we want to recognise that work and bring some of the strongest examples to the attention of the wider manufacturing community. Most importantly, we want to celebrate the successes where service transformation is already creating real value and contributing to the future of manufacturing.”