Strategic Improvements Through Industrial Services
Managing supply chains greatly depends on understanding the classification of industrial services, the customer expectation of the industrial services and how this expectation of the customer affects the quality of the services and demands for improvement
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Strategic Improvements Through Industrial Services
Managing supply chains greatly depends on understanding the classification of industrial services, the customer expectation of the industrial services and how this expectation of the customer affects the quality of the services and demands for improvement, and also the flexibility that is demanded in the service relationship. Companies are seeking new ways to win the competition. Products are often seen as similar by the customers and for this reason new differentiation methods are needed. This refers often to the ability of a company to adapt to changing environment and find ways to utilize its recourses (Barney 1991; Hunt and Morgan 1995; Hunt 1997). The perspective of industrial services as marketing and operations strategy allows to view both intangible and tangible assets as resources for creating value for chosen market segments (Hunt 1997). These resources could be, for example, physical, human, organizational, informational, or relational (Barney 1991; Hunt 1997), and they may not always have an enabling capacity; for example, a resource may be strategically irrelevant for a firm or even reduce its efficiency or effectiveness (Barney 1991). In the present context, manufacturing firms use resources to operationalize their service strategies in order to gain a competitive advantage. In other words, resources are defined as having an enabling capacity. Different manufacturing companies focus on different resources to operationalize their service strategies, and research has demonstrated that many companies find it difficult to implement their strategies (Wouters 2004). The development of industrial services can also be realized in virtual manufacturing environments (Chen 2015).
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 P. Helo et al., Designing and Managing Industrial Product-Service Systems, SpringerBriefs in Operations Management, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40430-1_4
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Strategic Improvements Through Industrial Services
Classification of Industrial Services
Categorization of consumer services has been well received by companies. Classification of industrial services seems to follow behind despite the certain similarities between these two areas. Common factors for both areas include the following properties: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Intangibility of the product. Inseparability from the service provider and cocreation aspects. Temporality – services are often created and consumed simultaneously. Heterogeneity of the service delivery due to cocreation and variability. Perishability of the service as inventory and storage concept does not really work with services.
For these reasons, it is also common that demand fluctuation affects the service provider’s capacity utilization. Managing service capacity and performance related to time and cost has to operationalize with occasionally idle servers (Stanton et al. 1991). Industrial services have been typically grouped into two categories, which are generic and wide by nature: 1. Maintenance and repair-related
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