This open access book is an outcome of several years of research, practice, and teaching experience of the authors on the challenges that underpin the successful switch to services for manufacturing firms. Ideal for a student as well as a practitioner, the book describes the industrial services ecosystem, the barriers and challenges, and a roadmap for building service excellence. Curated cases are used to describe the current approaches in practice to overcome the barriers. The book also provides several tools, each with a short introduction, that the authors have used successfully in projects to help overcome the servitization barriers. Many of these tools are from management, design thinking, or service design. The service excellence roadmap is based on the development methodology and helps current and future business leaders to create their own individual roadmaps.
About the Author: Shaun West is Professor of Product-Service System Innovation at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Switzerland). A Ph.D. from Imperial College in London, Prof. West worked for over 25 years in several industrial service businesses such as AEA Technology, National Power, GE Energy Services, and Sulzer. His research focuses on supporting industrial firms to develop and deliver new services and service-friendly business models. He is a member of the of the Swiss Alliance of Data-Intensives Services, and is on the advisory board for the ASAP Service Management Forum, an Italian industry-academic initiative that aims to promote service management's culture and excellence through research projects, practice, education, and technological transfer.
Paolo Gaiardelli is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Information and Production Engineering of the University of Bergamo (Italy). His teaching and research mainly focus on Production and Service Management, with a specific interest in Lean Management. He is the European Chair of IFIP Working Group 5.7 (Advances in Production Management Systems) and coordinator of its Special Interest Group in Service Systems Design, Engineering, and Management. He is also a member of ASAP Service Management Forum.
Nicola Saccani is an Associate Professor at the Department of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, University of Brescia (Italy). He is part of the RISE laboratory (Research and Innovation for Smart Enterprise) and is a member and past coordinator of the ASAP Service Management Forum. His research concerns service and supply chain management, particularly the impact of digital transformation, servitization, and a circular economy on business models, supply chain configuration, and operations management. He is the author of several scientific publications in these fields, and has taken part in several company transfer projects on these topics.