Stand Out UNSCRIPTED | Episode 372
Peter George, Head of Global Sales and Service for Alfa Laval’s Industrial Food and Heat Transfer Division and 2025 Stand Out 50 leader, joins Sarah Nicastro for a detailed, grounded conversation on how a global manufacturer transformed service from a necessary function into a genuine competitive differentiator.
Peter George has spent 38 years in engineering. He started as an apprentice, worked as a field service engineer, moved into technical sales, and has spent the last 25 years in management. That career arc, from the cold face of the field to global leadership, is not incidental to this conversation. It is the foundation of everything he shares.
Today he leads the Industrial Food and Heat Transfer Division of Alfa Laval, a Swedish company and global manufacturer of heat transfer, separation, and fluid handling solutions, with responsibility for both capital sales and service. The perspective that comes from having held both sides of that equation shapes how he thinks about the opportunity in service, and the responsibility that comes with leading the people who deliver it.
The Moment the Voice of the Customer Changed Everything
For years, service at Alfa Laval was important, but important in the way a necessity is important. The company's identity and investment were rooted in product. That began to shift as customer conversations evolved.
Customers stopped talking about break-fix. They started talking about reliability, predictability, efficiency, sustainability, and ROI. They wanted to know what the product did for their process over its full life cycle, not just whether someone would show up when it broke. The language customers used to describe service was fundamentally different from the language Alfa Laval was using internally.
Customers talk about making sure the plant is running. We talk about reconditioning. That slight misalignment can have massive consequences. - Peter George
Recognising that gap was the starting point. Closing it required an outside-in approach, listening to how customers described the value they needed, and adjusting the internal language, the offerings, and the organization to match.
The Service Wheel: Redefining the Offering Around Customer Value
One of the most tangible outputs of that listening was what Peter calls the service wheel. Starting by defining a clear service vision, across all service leaders within Alfa Laval, not just one division, the team then mapped their existing offerings against the full product life cycle and asked a simple question: what value does each of these services actually deliver to the customer?
The exercise led to renaming, restructuring, and in some cases creating entirely new service products. The shift was from “we can fix it” to “what is the problem, and how do we help you get to the root cause so these problems don’t reoccur?” That is a different conversation, one that positions Alfa Laval as a trusted partner rather than a reactive supplier.
It’s not about we can fix it. It’s more about what’s the problem and what value does it bring if this machine is working correctly or not. - Peter George
Talent, Work-Life Balance, and the Human Side of Service
Asked about how the organization needed to evolve alongside its service vision, Peter’s first response was not about systems or structure. It was about work-life balance.
Field service engineers are, as he describes them, “a one-man show.” They are often the first and last person a customer speaks to. The work is demanding, the hours are long, and for years the assumption was that this was simply the nature of the role. Peter’s view is that assumption is no longer acceptable and it is certainly not a retention strategy.
Alfa Laval’s response has been deliberate: ensuring adequate resourcing so load can be balanced, investing in training programs that build competence before engineers go in front of customers, and creating structured career pathways that allow talented field engineers to grow without having to leave the field entirely. Digital Service Centers, for example, have created an entirely new role, the digital engineer, that sits within service but operates differently. Career development has to be visible and real for people to stay.
If you want to attract people and retain people, you have to think a lot about recognition. It’s a hard life being a field service engineer. They’re probably the first and last person the customer speaks to. - Peter George
Technology as an Enabler of Both Customer and Employee Experience
The technology transformation at Alfa Laval has been shaped by a clear lens: how do we make the technician’s job easier? Central repositories of drawings, parts lists, and standard operating procedures accessible via tablet in the field. Real-time reporting tools that mean engineers are not spending two or three hours on administration after a long day on site. Systems embedded within the broader IT landscape so information flows seamlessly.
Digital Service Centers, staffed by digital engineers who can monitor connected equipment, provide predictive service, and support field engineers in real time via augmented reality, now cover most time zones. The footprint has expanded significantly as part of this transformation. But their value, in Peter’s framing, is dual: they serve customers, and they serve the people doing the work.
R&D for Service: The Most Tangible Proof of Progress
Perhaps the most telling symbol of how far Alfa Laval has come is the creation of dedicated R&D for service. Not product R&D. Service R&D, with a specific budget, dedicated engineers, and a mandate to listen to the service organization and develop solutions proactively.
The existence of that function says something that words alone cannot: service is no longer a support function orbiting the product. It is a strategic priority with its own innovation engine, its own investment thesis, and its own seat at the table.
To proactively be pulling from the organization to say, what do you think we can improve? Because we have dedicated R&D engineers who can take those prioritizations and say, we’re going to develop a solution. That’s so fundamental. - Peter George
The Jigsaw, the Pace, and the Payoff
Seven to eight years into this journey, the impact is measurable. Retention rates are up. Employee satisfaction surveys show the service organization in a markedly better place. Customer trust has deepened. And service has an internal language, a strategic vision, and an organizational commitment that would have been hard to imagine at the start.
The lesson Peter draws from the experience is not about speed. The most challenging part of the journey, he says, was resisting the urge to move faster than the organization could absorb. Every change had to be embedded, not just implemented. It had to involve marketing, HR, R&D, and capital sales - not just service. And it had to be sustainable.
That discipline, and the power of a united community of service leaders all speaking the same language and pushing in the same direction, is what made it stick.
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