Service Science: The Foundations of Service Engineering and Management

Chapter 9The Science of Service Systems and Networks

Manufacturing dominated the global economy during the last couple of centuries. Both academics and practitioners thus paid significant attention to the design, development, production, and innovation of physical products. With their contributions to the development of manufacturing science and technology, the manufacturing industry has considerably improved its production productivity and the quality of made products. In the second half of the twentieth century, in particular, the world witnessed a long period of prosperity in all aspects of well-being that were mainly driven by the spread of industrialization and substantially increased manufacturing productivities around the world.

Today, the quality of life has taken into account not only the material standard of living but also other intangible values of living that are recognized to be mainly service-oriented. As discussed in Chapter 2, the global economy has shifted its focus from manufacturing to services to meet the changing needs of human beings. Indeed, entering the information era has accelerated the shift, which created unfilled gaps in the service science and technology. Indeed, service organizations have been on the hunt for appropriate methodologies and tools that can help them engineer and manage their service offering and delivery throughout the service lifecycle at the scale they would like to reach, efficiently, cost-effectively, and globally (Spohrer and ...