تأمین تجهیزات خدمات در شرکت های تولیدی: نمایش نتایج از مطالعه سه مورد تعبیه شده

An increasing part of companies' purchasing expenditures is being spent on (business) services. At the same time, the interactive character of business services has so far largely been neglected in purchasing and supply management studies. The success of a service purchase is however established during the ongoing production and consumption of that service, which takes place in continuous interaction between buyer and seller. This paper investigates these ongoing interactive processes between buyer and seller after the purchase decision has been made. The specific focus is on services buying by manufacturers, since manufacturers' services spend increasingly encompasses services that eventually become part of the final offering to customers. This is expected to pose specific challenges for manufacturing companies, who have traditionally been involved with purchasing goods. Case studies into ongoing buyer–seller interaction are conducted at three manufacturing companies. Starting from a usage-based classification which contains four types of business services, four services are studied at each manufacturing company. The results show that indeed the different types of services can be associated with distinct patterns of ongoing interaction. Furthermore, the results provide initial support for the idea that having differentiated patterns of interaction contributes to successful ongoing service exchange.

The procurement of business services has become an important element of companies' acquisition of external resources (Axelsson and Wynstra, 2002 and Van Weele, 2005). Murray and Kotabe (1999) point out that individual organizations are moving away from pure product buying towards services buying. As such, manufacturing companies are incorporating more and more services into their activities (Machuca, del Mar Gonzalez-Zamora, & Aguilar-Escobar et al., 2007). Whereas the procurement of business services in manufacturing sectors has traditionally mostly been limited to Non Bill-of-Materials (Non-BOM) services, more recently, manufacturing companies are increasingly adding services to their offerings to customers. Rosen (1998) for example observed that in a typical manufacturing company, services can account for 30% to 70% of value added. Giffi, Roth, and Seal (1991) studied 759 leading manufacturing firms and showed that the majority have incorporated a significant service component in their “strategic bills of materials”. Thus, manufacturers are increasingly augmenting their products with services that add value to the customer's use of the physical product and lower the customer's total life cycle cost (Hill et al., 2002). At the same time, much of the existing knowledge in the field of Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) has mostly been aimed at buying goods. Sheth (1996, p. 14) argues that compared to goods, academic knowledge about services is limited. Furthermore, Thomas (1978) and Nie and Kellogg (1999) point out that applying theories and techniques developed in the manufacturing arena directly to services is inadequate. Ellram, Tate, and Billington (2004) suggest that the inherent differences in services require specific supply chain management tools. This implies that one cannot draw on knowledge on goods procurement for services buying. Consequently, Fitzsimmons, Noh, and Thies (1998) and Stock and Zinszer (1987) found that organizational buyers deem the procurement of business services to be substantially different from or even more difficult than the procurement of goods. This may cause specific difficulties for manufacturing companies, who have traditionally been very much goods-oriented. A key characteristic underlying these difficulties, as emphasized by services marketing scholars, is that (business and consumer) services are being produced and consumed in interactive processes between buyers and sellers (Grönroos, 2000 and Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996). Indeed, Buse, Freiling, and Weissenfels (2001) argue that manufacturing companies need to understand the business as a service business rather than a product business, in which the customer is integrated into the process of providing customized solutions. Taking a supply chain management perspective, Sampson (2000) claims these chains are bi-directional. From a PSM perspective, there have been relatively few attempts to investigate these interactive processes between buyers and seller of business services in great detail (Wynstra, Axelsson, & Van der Valk, 2006). Most studies into service procurement have focused on the initial stages of the purchasing process (e.g. supplier selection Day & Barksdale, 1994) rather than on the continuous processes that take place in these bi-directional supply chains. Jackson and Cooper (1988) furthermore claim that services that become part of offerings to end customers have largely been neglected by researchers. This paper therefore investigates the ongoing interactive processes between buyers and providers of various kinds of business services. Building on a classification of business services proposed by Wynstra et al. (2006), who identify four types of business services based on how the service is used by the buying company, the ongoing interactions between manufacturers and providers of both NPR and PR services are studied. Our main objective is to identify systematic variation in buyer–seller interaction for different types of business services. The insights obtained are used to develop propositions on patterns of ongoing interaction between manufacturing companies buying business services and their service providers. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. First, the theoretical background underlying this study is explained. After discussing the research methods, the results of three embedded case studies into the ongoing interaction between manufacturers buying business services and their service providers are presented and analyzed. The paper ends with conclusions, and a discussion of future research directions.

This paper presented the results of three embedded case studies into service procurement practices at manufacturing companies. Starting from a classification of business services based on how the buying firm uses/applies the service with respect to its own offerings, ongoing interaction was studied for ten service purchases. The results show that for the three types of services studied, systematic variation occurs with regard to most of dimensions of interaction; for adaptations, systematic variation could not clearly be found. Thus, overall, manufacturing companies differentiate their service procurement practices, thereby supporting the apparent importance of adopting a contingent rather than a best practice approach to buying business services. The patterns of interaction that were identified are furthermore in line with the expectations regarding variation in interaction. Based on these findings, propositions have been developed regarding effective patterns of interaction for the different types of business services. Finally, the fact that the buying companies are generally satisfied with the service process and the service outcome suggests that the interactions observed are effective. Thus: manufacturing companies seem fairly successful when buying services. For two services purchased by COCO, this idea is supported by the questionnaire results. With the two other services however, COCO is only just satisfied (success scores of 3.2 and 3.6), which suggests there is room for improving service procurement practices at manufacturing companies.