An effective and efficient method to design services: empirical study for services by an investment-machine manufacturer

Abstract

Knowledge in practice on how to design offerings of services and products effectively and efficiently is demanded in manufacturing industries. This article discusses some empirical results obtained from designing services at a manufacturer, who had implemented information-communication networks to their customers and adopted a structured method to design services. It demonstrates that the method worked for a real-scaled problem to generate several effective solutions with input of approximately five person-months. This is contributed largely by the technique addressing customer value through extension of quality function deployment. Simultaneously, it is pointed out that special efforts are needed to prepare the ontology used to describe the model.