Services

Technological progress, stringent competitive conditions and continually changing customer behaviour force the logistics industry to develop innovative solutions to generate long-term competitive advantage. Compared to the development of physical products, a systematic innovations management has not been established in logistics yet. Grounded in the analysis of interviews with experts from industry, this article puts forward requirements with respect to innovation management implementation and suggests the use of specific methods.

Facing increasing competition through globalization and short innovation cycles industry leaders need to include services in their innovation strategy. The WIN-model shows that combined strategies for product and service innovation are creating sustainable competitive advantages. Enhancing product offers with complex services and service solutions are long-term investments to sustain USPs. Integrated product and service innovation to create service solutions require deep understanding of customer needs. Delivering such services lead to close interaction with the customers which are not visible for competitors. To provide service solutions, services need to be included in the corporate innovation strategy. Services need to be driven by the C-suite. Great services will push the image and branding of your company and interaction with customers will push product innovation. A WIN-WIN situation!

In the last few years industrial companies remark that industrial services offer an interesting opportunity for companies to improve their company performance. To exploit this opportunity these companies have to clearly distinguish themselves from their competitors. Against this background the question what are the decisive factors of success for industrial services have to be explored. In an empirical study we got evidence that the success factors depending on different kind of services. Furthermore the following article discusses reasons for the interesting empirical results achieved.

Integrating products and services to customized hybrid products can help firms to differentiate from their competitors. The essential value proposition of such bundled offerings can comprise usage-based selling (e.g. of machines) combined with guaranteed availability or the operation of customers’ complex production factors such as a complete assembly line. Operational efficiency is no longer sufficient for achieving long term success with hybrid products. Rather it is the way of interaction with customers which provides new opportunities for value creation. In the context of hybrid products the way of creating value for customers changes from a purely transactional view to a relational process. Accordingly, this paper addresses this change from a process-oriented perspective.

Competence in building more innovative ships will help the German Maritime Industry guaranteeing its existence under competitive conditions in respect to Asia. The realistic visualisation with Virtual Reality (VR) enables the demonstration of the shipyard’s design competence to the customer in an early stage as well as the discussion of design decisions and their implications between ship yard and supplier. Using the example of shipbuilding, the article shows which changes in the business processes of a company are essential for an efficient use of VR and which add-ons are necessary for a user-oriented ease of operation.

Although German planning service providers have specialized know-how in the field of factory planning, their size and insufficient resources limit their options to provide their services internationally. The formation of networks represents an outstanding opportunity for SME to bundle their competencies to become active in international markets. In order to support this process, this article identifies opportunities for bundling systems from the perspective of providers and describes potential network configurations. In addition, it introduces measures and actions intended to support planning service providers when they implement their services internationally in a network.

Despite the increasing importance of industrial services, they are frequently developed unsystematically and often do not meet needs and expectations to guarantee a successful market launch. The increasing competition in many service markets emphasize the need for systematic analysis of all requirements, meaning to continuously develop innovative services that meet exactly with requirements of customers, employees, management and other stakeholders. This paper introduces a systematic process to analyse requirements within the process of new service development.

Firms offering product-related services can be distinguished by development stages or by types. Type-1 firms focus on the product and may benefit from refinements of service cost accounting. Type-2 firms exhibit an extended offer of separately priced services. For these firms, capacity planning and thus information on fixed capacity costs is especially important. Type-3 firms offer relationship-based services and thereby increasingly apply full-service contracts. This alters the risk distribution between the firm and its customers so that variable costs and pricing issues become more important.

Traditionally product focused companies diversify into the industrial service business and recognize the transition to solution provider as a key idea for their business. But the historically grown organizational structures do only support this transition to a certain extent. Existing structures need to be replaced by organizational design which supports the new strategies of the companies. Product business and service business will need to be organizationally detached from each other. These changes in organizations are often accompanied by conflicts and challenges which need to be addressed.

The creation and configuration of innovative business models within the sheet metal forming industry focuses on the development of saleable product-service-combinations. It is necessary to integrate these product-service-combinations in adequate value chain configurations. To charge the output of the product-service-combinations appropriate revenue models must be selected and configured. This article shows an integrative methodology for redesigning existing and creating new business models.