تحلیلی بر روی استراتژی های تولید سرویس گرا

Service-Oriented Manufacturing (SOM) strategy is a new manufacturing mode by integrating servitization with the traditional manufacturing industry. The advantages and importance of the SOM strategy are gradually recognized by more and more enterprises. However, the enterprises' specific cost structures and cost configurations for providing customized services have influences on the decisions about whether the SOM strategy should be adopted, how to determine the suitable scope of SOM, and how to set the suitable pricing scheme of their offerings. This paper performs an analytical study on the above objectives and proposes an optimal decision model for designing SOM strategy. Our analysis on the SOM strategy under competition offers some insights into: when enterprises should perform SOM; what the suitable scope of SOM is, and how to design pricing strategies for SOM. From this analytical study, we draw some managerial implications that: for an enterprise in a duopoly market, if the fixed part in the unit cost of service is lower than the one third of the equilibrium price, the enterprise should adopt the SOM strategy; in addition, one half of the enterprise's customers should be covered by the SOM strategy at most.

In the past decades, the servitization was gradually integrated with the traditional manufacturing industry, which brought out an advanced manufacturing mode, i.e., Service-Oriented Manufacturing (SOM) (Fry et al., 1994). By performing the SOM strategy, manufacturing enterprises try to provide customers with a bundle of innovative services and the goods so as to meet the customers' special requirements (Vandermerve and Rada, 1988). The SOM strategy helps the manufacturing enterprises to extend their reach ever closer to the customers and the customers' underlying needs. From the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the later part of the 18th century, almost all manufacturing enterprises simply engaged in manufacturing. They did not provide bundled services and also did not control their supply chain through vertical integration (Schmenner, 2001). From the 20th century, some enterprises firstly engaged in vertical integration to control their supply chains; then they went a step further to bundle goods and services together for their customers. Some of the world-famous enterprises, e.g., IBM, GE, HP, are becoming more than the simply manufacturers and entering the realm of service providers. For a long time, IBM was oriented at being ‘a manufacturer of IT products’, and covered many aspects of IT categories, e.g., chip design and manufacturing, hard disk drive, mainframe computer, personal computer, software, etc. However, with the advent of the recession of the hardware manufacturing, IBM entered a difficult situation. Its deficit reached 16 billion USD during the first three years in 1990s. Then a series of reforms were performed to adjust its business structure. IBM got rid of some unimportant business sections and utilized the OEM mode in its manufacturing process. Moreover, through the buyout of Lotus Software Company, some consulting business of PwC, IBM completed its transformation from an IT product manufacturer to an IT service provider. On the basis of this, IBM performs the service innovation and has extended its service scope to: strategic-level consulting; design, implementation, and maintenance of information systems, etc. The new SOM mode brought IBM with strong competiveness. In the past decade, the growth rate is kept higher than 10%. Within its revenue, more than 50% is earned by providing services. As the World Factory, China is encouraging their enterprises to transform from the traditional pure-manufacturing mode to the SOM strategy. In China, an example of performing SOM, which is commonly used in the case study of business schools, is Shanxi Blower Group Co., Ltd. This company mainly manufactures blower turbines, and also provides services, e.g., spare parts, wear parts, repairs, inspections, preventive maintenance, technical advice, consulting, etc. It has established a service center that specially handles all types of service issues. A remote trouble shooting online system was also implemented so as to inspect the real-time states of the equipments in its customers' sites. The revenue of this company increased by seven times from 50 million USD in 2000 to 367 million USD in 2005. The annual growth rate of profit reached 89% during 2000–2005, which is much higher than the growth rate of revenue, i.e., 49%. By performing the SOM strategy, enterprises can offer multiple services tailored to meet diverse customer requirements, especially for some customers with high priority, or some market segments unserved or poorly served by existing products (Hobo et al., 2006). The SOM strategy also allows the enterprises to charge higher prices for their offerings. Customers are also frequently willing to pay a premium, which reflects the added value of satisfaction that arises from the individualized services. Although the SOM strategy can bring some advantages to the enterprises, it is not clear whether the enterprises can benefit from the SOM strategy in the face of competition since their rivals can also adopt the similar SOM strategy. Besides, the enterprises may not provide services to all of their customers. In order words, the SOM strategy maybe just cover some of the customers; and for others, only products are sold to them without customized services. In this case, increasing the scope of SOM will incur undesirable influences on the total cost, product and service quality. Thus enterprises should carefully evaluate the benefit and the cost of adopting SOM over no SOM. Therefore, how to design an effective and profitable SOM strategy is becoming more and more critical in nowadays' competitive markets. Each possible SOM strategy will impact the completion differently. For an enterprise who is interested in performing SOM, three key questions should be investigated firstly: (1) whether the SOM strategy should be adopted; (2) what is the suitable scope of SOM; (3) what is the suitable pricing scheme of their offerings. The decisions for the above three questions are mainly influenced by operational factors and market characteristics. The operational factors include: the cost associated with investment in service center and manufacturing technologies that enable the SOM strategy, and the unit cost of providing customized services to an individual customer. The market characteristics mainly include the competition between rivals within the market, pricing strategies, etc. This study considers the above factors and proposes an optimal decision model for designing SOM strategy. Our analysis on the SOM strategy under competition offers some insights into: when enterprises should perform SOM; what the suitable scope of SOM is, and how to design pricing strategies for SOM. We conduct an analytical study on these issues. Several managerial implications are obtained and discussed at the end of this study.

The advantages and importance of the Service-Oriented Manufacturing (SOM) strategy are gradually recognized by more and more enterprises. However, the SOM strategy is not suitable for all the enterprises. For enterprises, their statuses in their markets are different; their cost structures and cost configurations for providing customized services are also specific in realistic business environments. All of these factors have influences on the decisions about whether the SOM strategy should be adopted, how to determine the suitable scope of SOM, and how to set the suitable pricing scheme of their offerings. This paper performs an analytical study on the above objectives and proposes an optimal decision model for designing SOM strategy. Our analysis on the SOM strategy under competition offers some insights into: when enterprises should perform SOM; what the suitable scope of SOM is, and how to design pricing strategies for SOM. From this analytical study, we can draw some managerial implications that: for an enterprise in a duopoly market, if the fixed part in the unit cost of service is lower than the one third of the equilibrium price, the enterprise should adopt the SOM strategy; in addition, one half of the enterprise's customers should be covered by the SOM strategy at most. This study has several limitations, which are direct results of modeling assumptions. For example, the duopoly market; single product is manufactured by enterprises; the quadratic function for service costs; the uniform distribution of customer preferences; and the linear discriminatory pricing scheme for the service charge; etc. All of these assumptions could be relaxed or replaced by other more realistic ones in the future studies.