Service Operations Management

Question 1

What are the three (or four) industrial sectors? How have they evolved with respect to manufacturing and service operations?

Answer 1

Question 2

Explain facilitating products and goods-service packages

Answer 2

Facilitating products

• A product that enables the service but isn’t a part of the service that is experienced or consumed
• E.g: Airplanes or computers in banking

Goods-service packages

• Products or services which are a part of the expereince or consumed through the package that is offered.
• E.g: food on airplane, hairspray at hairdresser
• Pure services are rare, most include physical goods and we often refer to these as goods-service packages.

Question 3

Explain the service process matrix, why is it useful?

Answer 3

Question 4

What are the unique features of services and what problems are derived from these features?

Answer 4

Features

• Intangability influences advertising, presentation and quality control
• Perishability influences inventory control and production planning
• Heterogeneity of product influences quality control and standardization
• Simultaniety of production and consumption influnces location

Problems

• Intangibility > no physical product > problems of measurement
• Heterogeneity > lack of standardization > no predetermined norms
• Perishability > time limited resource availability > problems of constant rescheduling
• Simultaneity of production and consumption > change in demand immediately impacts capacity > problems of providing real-time information

Question 5

What is front office and back office?

Answer 5

Front office: The section which interacts with the customers and handles sales & marketing.

Back office: The section has no direct customer interaction. E.g: administrations and operations personnel

Question 6

Give examples of internalized services and explain key concepts within externalized services

Answer 6

Internalized services

• Enabling (e.g: purchasing, production engineering)
• Assisting (e.g maintenance, management service)
• Controlling (e.g production control, quality control)

Externalized services

• Servitazation: Term that describes the trend towards services becoming as fundamental as products that are sold.
• Product-service system: A mix of both products and services rather than the traditional focus on products.

Question 7

What types of services are offered by manufactureres (3 kinds) and what do they focus on?

Answer 7

Question 8

What take-away from the servitization article can be had regarding manufacturers who embrace servitazation?

Answer 8

Manufactureres who embrace servitazation tend to retain capablities in design & production. They do so because it benefits their speed, effectiveness and costs of supporting assets on advanced services contracts.