Engineering Service Network – The future of research on services in the manufacturing industry

Melanie Kreye, Magnus Persson, Peter Magnusson, Taija Turunen

Research output: Book/ReportReportResearch

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Abstract

The main purpose of this report is to provide managers in service-based departments in manufacturing firms directions and tools for developing their service capabilities further. Based on a collaborative project
between four Nordic universities, this report offers insights on the following three objectives of this report:

1. We provide directions and future challenges for engineering-service provision based on existing challenges from managerial practice. These focus particularly on the nature of service offerings, digital services, platforms and globalisation.

2. We outline meaningful suggestions and questions to guide future research to explore these directions in more detail.

3. We offer managerial guidance on these identified directions to support managers’ decision making.

This report culminates a combination of research studies. The authors of this report conducted inductive studies with industrial collaborators to identify and explore directions and future challenges within the area of engineering services. These were complemented with focused research studies to substantiate these areas in more detail. Based on these insights, this report details the status quo in Nordic industry for engineering services. This status quo can be summarised as follows;

• Service offerings are still predominantly focused on less complex services with more complex engineering services or solutions being less frequently.

• Digital technology plays an increasingly important role for engineering service provision.

• The use of platforms, i.e., a common basis for different service variants, is varied in Nordic industry with observations suggesting an inverted u-shape where companies tend to either adopt it fully or not at all.

• Globalisation of engineering-service provision offers benefits for provider in generating operational efficiencies but careful considerations of the trade-offs between local flexibility and global standardisation are needed.

This report also gives an outlook into future directions of engineering services, which we predict will further increase their importance for Nordic manufacturing with efforts focusing on retaining global competitiveness and operational efficiency for service provision. Some of the emerging topics pointing towards the future directions for engineering services are as follows:

• Development of remote services, such as remote installation, condition monitoring and maintenance, become increasingly important. Integration of digital technology is key for this endeavour.

• Platforms may offer a useful way to organize a large portfolio of service offerings for different customer segments. Especially globally operating companies may use platforms for efficient and effective structuring of their global service business and offer customers a standardized interface for services.

• Global service provision offers paths to increase global competitiveness. Future directions focus around the value of globalizing services, structural implications for providing firms to support globalization, and dynamic development of global networks over time.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherTechnical University of Denmark
Number of pages30
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

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