Establishing Sustainable Business Models Through Subscription in Machinery and Plant Engineering

Companies in machinery and plant engineering make a significant contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions and the use of raw materials. Therefore, they have decisive poten-tial to make better use of resources, increase efficiency and avoid overproduction with regard to a more sustainable economy. How-ever, sustainability is not necessarily an end in itself for companies and must therefore be motivated by incentives. In addition to po-litical legislation and its mandatory implementation of sustainabil-ity initiatives, there must also be financial incentives for compa-nies. In this way, sustainable companies can be successful in a competitive environment in the long term. By using subscription mod-els, companies can establish a long-term and stronger connection to the products and customers. The resulting longer and more in-tensive use of the utilized resources or the extension of the life cycle through upgrades make a significant contribution to sustainabil-ity. This paper therefore examines the effect of subscription mod-els on the establishment of sustainable business models. On the one hand, interdependencies between subscription models and sus-tainable business models are determined. On the other hand, these interdependencies are analyzed concerning influencing factors for sustainability.