Service supply chain: Nature, evolution, and operational implications

Along with the service sector plays a more critical role in the development of world economy, conventional manufacturer puts more focus on bundling service with physical products to gain competitive advantage. Based on the traditional theory of supply chain management, this paper proposes Service Supply Chain to cover the supply chains for both service industry and manufacturing industry. Then a Product-Service Matrix is established to reveal the nature of the service supply chain. A Servitization-Globalization Matrix is developed to describe the evolution footprint from conventional manufacturing factory to Global Service Network and Global Manufacturing Network. Finally, this paper establishes a conceptual framework for service supply chain management, and the management processes are proposed and compared with other model. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010