Bearing Assist: How SKF Transformed Bearing Maintenance

• Accedia partnered with SKF, a global bearing manufacturer present in 130 countries, to rebuild the Bearing Assist mobile app into a guided maintenance tool for field technicians.
• An autonomous Accedia product team led discovery, UX research, and full technical modernization of the iOS and Android applications starting in 2022.
• Bearing Assist evolved from a static product catalogue into a step-by-step workflow tool with measurement tracking, traceability journals, and a conversational AI agent grounded in SKF's technical documentation.

About SKF

SKF is a global leader in bearing manufacturing and rotating equipment performance. Headquartered in Sweden and present in 130 countries through more than 17,000 distributors, the company serves over 40 industries with products and services spanning bearings, seals, lubrication systems, and condition monitoring. With a century of engineering expertise and a trusted industrial brand, SKF continually works to reduce energy waste and make better use of resources and is on track to achieve net‑zero greenhouse gas emissions across its supply chain by 2050.

The Challenge: From a Product Catalogue Application to a Step-by-step Guided Assistant

At the start of our collaboration, Bearing Assist was a classic web and mobile application that mirrored a bearing product catalogue, technical information, and mounting instructions. The product vision was still evolving, and initial requirements were not fully defined. SKF needed a software development partner who could lead product delivery, clarify direction through research, and make decisive choices quickly. One of the main goals was to equip technicians, especially those with less experience, with clear, step‑by‑step guidance in the field. At the same time, SKF sought to achieve measurable outcomes, including extending bearing life, reducing repeat work, accelerating technician onboarding, and contributing to its sustainability goals. Legacy code and architecture also constrained delivery speed and quality, making modernization essential.

Download the full case study. See how Accedia rebuilt Bearing Assist, with application screenshots and detailed visuals from the live product.

Partnering with SKF: Why Accedia and How We Collaborated

SKF engaged Accedia in 2022 to provide an autonomous, cross‑functional Scrum team tasked with rebuilding and redesigning their mobile application. The team combined a Product Owner, UI/UX Designer, Technology Lead, iOS and Android Engineers, Backend Developers, QA Specialists, and DevOps Engineers. SKF’s Product Manager oversaw several initiatives and empowered Accedia to lead product discovery and translate SKF’s vision into roadmap decisions and delivery. At the same time, SKF retained full ownership of the product direction and intellectual property.

From the start, Accedia operated as an extension of SKF’s own product organization rather than a traditional outsourcing vendor. Built on trust and independence, the collaboration enabled fast, evidence‑based decisions and a steady delivery pace, ensuring Bearing Assist evolved quickly to meet real‑world technician needs.

This collaboration has also been a key contributor to SKF’s broader digital transformation and Industry 4.0 strategy. By modernizing the platform and enabling guided, data‑driven workflows, Bearing Assist is now positioned to become the primary digital companion for field technicians across multiple service scenarios, not only bearing mounting and dismounting.

Accedia’s Approach: Building a Modern Software Solution to Aid Bearing Maintenance

We began by learning about the industrial equipment industry, SKF’s sector, and the specifics of its technician workflows. This groundwork allowed us to understand the context and where improvements would create the most value in the Bearing Assist app. From there, Accedia moved into product discovery, user research, and competitor analysis to identify pain points and opportunities. Because direct research with less experienced technicians was challenging, we instrumented the application to capture usage patterns, redesigned in‑app feedback to encourage responses, and collected offline input from service centers and field teams. Each learning cycle resulted in UX improvements, from clearer navigation and visual guidance to more discoverable primary actions on critical user flows and journeys.

To ensure responsible use of technician and operational data, the application follows SKF’s global standards for data protection, privacy, and compliance. All collected data is handled securely, used only to improve the service experience, and processed in accordance with applicable regulations.

In parallel, we addressed the mobile application’s technical foundations. Accedia restructured the solution to replace the outdated frameworks and libraries while delivering value incrementally. Our team established a design system, behavior‑driven testing, and CI/CD pipelines, ensuring stable releases and faster feedback.

The Solution: A Step-by-Step Bearing Mounting Software for Technicians

Bearing Assist evolved from a static browser of technical information for industrial bearings into a guided maintenance workflow tool, a collaborative assistant for bearing replacements. Unlike general‑purpose maintenance tools and static catalogues, Bearing Assist pairs SKF‑authored bearing expertise with guided, bearing‑specific workflows and checks to help standardize best practices across teams. The application allows technicians to filter products, scan barcodes, or use a conversational AI agent to access mounting and dismounting instructions, review checks, and follow guided workflows during industrial bearing replacements.

Additionally, it prompts users to record measurements, issuing warnings when tolerances are exceeded. After each job, mountings are saved to a journal that builds a replacement history and improves traceability. The solution also enables teams to collaborate by sharing notes and photos, and to export completed workflows as PDF reports for easy distribution. While the web experience was redesigned, the primary focus was on the mobile application, where field use is most critical and widely spread.

SKF Sweden’s own service technicians emphasize that Bearing Assist has become their standard digital tool for bearing replacements, and they consider it a prerequisite for delivering a quality‑assured mounting process.

Technology Stack

The mobile application is built natively with Swift and SwiftUI for iOS and Jetpack Compose for Android. We implemented the backend in JavaScript with Node.js, while managing the product design and prototyping in Figma. Quality is reinforced with Cucumber as a testing framework, and Azure DevOps focuses on project management and CI/CD.

Business Impact: Better Technician Support and Sustainability Gains

The rebuilt Bearing Assist equips SKF technicians with guided mounting workflows, real‑time checks, and clearer navigation, enabling teams to work with greater confidence, reducing repeat jobs, and facilitating faster onboarding. These improvements align with SKF’s broader shift toward data‑driven maintenance. In 2024, SKF reported 6.6% growth in reliability services and solutions, driven by wider adoption of condition monitoring technologies. Bearing Assist builds on these same competencies, helping teams prevent errors and improve first-time-right outcomes.

By extending bearing life, the application supports SKF’s sustainability agenda by reducing waste and improving resource efficiency. This contribution is consistent with SKF’s 2024 progress toward decarbonization, including a 59% reduction in Scope 1 & 2 CO₂ emissions versus 2019.