Abstract

With the trend towards blurred boundaries between manufacturing and services, the servitization of manufacturing (also known as industrial services, servicizing) has surged as an important thrust of transformation for a growing number of manufactures. The servitization of manufacturing may involve issues, such as strategic realignment at the corporate level, the rearrangement of intra-firm and inter-firm organizations and institutional relationships, capability-building, and new pricing and revenue models. This paper refers to the existing literature to propose three modes of the servitization of manufacturing; namely Mode 1: Product Extension Service, Mode 2: Product Function Service, and Mode 3: Integrated Solution. The paper goes further to make comparisons between a few domestic and foreign cases by referring to three dimensions, including: 1. Supply chain: the reconfiguration of the supply chain vs. the value creation of new supply chain; 2. Offering: functional offering of product/service vs. innovative offering of product/service; 3. Complexity: low technology/system complexity vs. high technology/system complexity. Based on the above dimensions, via case comparison, the study attempts to spotlight the differences in the essence and business models of servitization between a few domestic and foreign firms. Finally, the paper proposes the possible paths of servicizing and draws policy implication.  

Keywords

servitization/industrial service(product) servicizingmodes of servitization in manufacturing