Performance Measurement of industrial services

Transparency on service processes and results as the basis for the management of product-service systems (diss.)

Researcher:

Ingo Lange

Financed by:

The Professorship’s own resources

Motivation:

The past years have demonstrated a huge trend according to which traditional manufacturing companies have become professional service providers by offering increasingly complex product-service bundles with a strong focus on customer (producer) needs. For service providers, as specialists on their own products, life-cycle-oriented services, such as maintenance, are a major source of revenue
and play an important role in achieving customer satisfaction. Driven by the outsourcing phenomenon, service providers are becoming an integrated part of the customer’s value chain processes. This service paradigm shift requires an increased joint service initiative between service providers and their customers. Due to the integrative character of industrial services, the realization of the desired benefits in a win-win situation requires the definition, integration and alignment of service and production processes, as well as corresponding performance measures that take into account the customers needs, wants and preferences. Thus the central assumption of this dissertation states that transparency of service operation processes and the performance of these processes is crucial for maintaining ongoing and new  collaborative service business relationships. The background of this dissertation is the EU project “Innovation, Coordination and Collaboration in Service-Driven Manufacturing Supply Chains (InCoCo-S)” (EC STRP 017192) in the sixth framework program.

Objectives and Results

The objective of the dissertation project was the development of a service  performance measurement system (SPMS) supporting the selection of appropriate performance indicators for different service scenarios. The following research questions have been answered during the development of the framework:

• What should a PMS for PSS look like in order to cope with the specific requirements arising from the character of industrial services?
• How should the PMS framework be structured in order to support the selection of appropriate performance indicators when applied different service scenarios?

The dissertation firstly introduces the trends in service-driven manufacturing supply chains, the concept of product-service-systems (PSS), and the resulting need for service performance measurement. It will then link the areas of Performance Measurement with the concept of PSS in the context of Supply Chain Management.
The dissertation develops the argument that performance measurement of industrial services is still an unresolved subject of research. Based on a literature review, it demonstrates that existing Performance Measurement Systems are not able to meet the identified requirements for measuring the performance of integrative industrial services.
In the main part, the framework of the Service Performance Measurement System (SPMS) developed is described, as a structured set of operational Performance Indicators associated with service reference processes applicable for different service scenarios. In addition, the dissertation presents a generalized concept incorporating analysis tools, process models, and modeling techniques. The stepwise implementation guideline provides the basis to achieve transparency on service operation performance and supports the design of collaborative business relationships in the domain of industrial product services.
Three use cases are presented for the validation of the framework and to demonstrate how the performance measurement system is applied in practice. The dissertation concludes with findings and limitations of the work, emphasizing the new knowledge emerging from the research.