Industrial service profiling: Matching service offerings and processes

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. In this paper we take the supplier's view on the task of providing industrial services; i.e. the supply of after-sales services, including tangibles such as spare parts and consumables, related to the maintenance of industrial goods. We focus on the positioning of industrial services relative manufacturing, aiming at an integrated approach for manufacturing and service operations management. We extend the product-profiling concept of Hill to service operations, developing the concept of industrial service profiling, providing a detailed analysis of market and service offering characteristics relative production characteristics. The resulting profile reveals possible mismatches in the existing operations, and can also be used to identify areas in need of corrective actions. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.