Now, so far, this may all be quite familiar, but one of Tim's colleagues at the Institute for Manufacturing, Professor Andy Neely, told me that as this business model gets more sophisticated, it causes companies to completely rethink how they work with their customers.

There's a concept called the services staircase, which is really increasing maturity or sophistication of the services.

So if you imagine at the ground floor, the basic level, you're just providing the product.

At the next level, you're saying, "We won't just provide the product.

We'll also do the maintenance, and we will repair your product when it goes wrong." So that's like you and me taking our car to the garage and getting it serviced.

At the next level, what is happening is the sensors and the data and the instruments in the vehicle are remotely monitoring the health of the vehicle.

And so rather than getting your oil changed every year, it goes, "Actually, you've only done three thousand miles.

Tomorrow takes Caterpillar.