پرونده سازی خدمات صنعتی: ارائه خدمات و فرآیندهای تطبیقی

Firms using industrial goods as a resource in their own operations need support and services to maintain an efficient use of these resources. Education, spare parts and maintenance are just some examples of services required by many industrial customers. These services make up a large part of many industrial companies purchase budget, but, even more importantly, for the supplier these services often make up a substantial proportion of the company's profit. There is also a trend towards the integration of goods and services. However, there is little help available on strategies for the efficient supply or manufacture of such services. An operations strategy should not be limited to supporting just new sales if the after-sales market of industrial services has a large impact on the company's competitive advantage. A complete operations strategy should therefore be linked not only to the marketing strategy, but also to a service strategy of the company.

Industrial service is becoming increasingly important to manufacturing firms for a number of reasons. To improve profitability it is not enough to sell just a product; the real impact on profitability comes from exploiting downstream opportunities, by providing the customers with products such as financing, maintenance, spare parts and consumables (Knecht et al., 1993; Wise and Baumgartner, 1999). Since the majority of manufacturing companies (with industrial customers) not only deliver a tangible product but also serve an after-sales service market, there is a need to ensure that the operations strategy not only supports the new product sales, but also conforms to the after-sales service supply. Thus, it is essential to understand and appreciate how the industrial service operations of the firm are related to its manufacturing processes. Strategy development within the service operations area draws on manufacturing operations management ideas to some extent. However, there are some distinct differences between manufacturing and services. Still, Schmenner (1986, p. 32) states: “service managers who claim that their operations are unique may be left in the dust by those who see their operations as more generic”. Thus, there is a need for a structured approach for the strategic positioning of service operations. The positioning of manufacturing processes relative product and market characteristics, as suggested by Finch and Luebbe (1995) and Goffin and New (2001)) through the product–process matrix, has been transferred to the service arena, most notably through the customer contact model by Chase (1981), the service process matrix by Schmenner (1986), and the classification schemes by Silvestro et al. (1992), Kellogg and Nie (1995) and Buzacott (2000).

Industrial service is in general a profitable part of the business for manufacturing firms. Nevertheless, it is vital to understand the nature of the specific service that is offered to the market and its relationship to the design of the service process. A fit between the service offering and the service process is likely to lead to improved customer service as well as improved utilisation of the resources involved, and thus ultimately to improved competitive edge and profitability. In this paper, we have developed ISP, based on the product-profiling concept by Hill (2000), and drawing on the service literature and our experience from firms with pronounced industrial service operations. This framework allows for a more detailed analysis and prescription of the positioning and fit between service offerings and service processes than previous service operations frameworks that extend the product–process matrix by Hayes and Wheelwright (1979a). Our development approach is similar in that we borrow a concept from the manufacturing strategy arena and transfer it to a service operations setting. To illustrate the use and usefulness of the proposed framework we perform a positioning analysis in the ISP for three industrial services. An extension for further research is to develop a product-profiling concept for services in general, encompassing all types of services.