Abstract

The term “service inventory” implies that a firm keeps a “service in process” within a service-based supply chain as a form of temporary stock. The “temporary service stock” belongs to a certain value activity within the service supply chain; once the service is demanded by a customer, the service provider will deploy temporary service as “the final service”. Due to the lack of empirical studies regarding this concept, we conducted research by way of a quantitative approach, using the data mining and cluster analysis methodologies to identify and analyze the relationship between service inventory and operational performance. By using time-space air-queuing data from a group of 300 taxi drivers provided from the Taiwan Taxi Fleet group’s satellite system, we identified four categories of taxi drivers’ service inventory patterns: “Customized”, “High-Speed”, “Flexibility” and “Routine”, respectively. Furthermore, we investigated the relationships between these four patterns and their performance, with the end result showing that most drivers of the fleet qualify in the Flexibility category, efficiently overcoming issues in service perishability and unstockability by utilizing the “on-the-air queuing system” for the taxi service. This study concludes with theoretical and practical implications for academia and practitioner reference.  

Keywords

service inventorytaxion-air queuing systemsharing economy