The service design strategy of manufacturing service industry

Along with the changes of economic structure, Taiwanese manufacturing firms are facing unfavorable problems such as increasing operating costs and the matured product life cycle. In order to gain competitiveness, many manufacturers in Taiwan are transforming into “manufacturing service industry” to satisfy customer needs. Many manufacturers are moving toward to provide high value-added services by service innovation. Previous studies argue that service design is an important issue in service innovation. After literature review, this study presents a new framework for service design as a means and an end tool for modeling, designing, and developing the new manufacturing services. According to the proposed framework, service design covers service concept, customer value and science & technology. This paper applies qualitative case study method to discuss how the manufacturers apply service design to fulfill customer needs. Next, a qualitative single case study is reported, in which a troublesome service design concept was surveyed through 5 extensive interviews. We provide not only an original perspective on service design in manufacturing industry, but also a common implicit view that pure manufactures can shift to service-oriented manufactures by adding service to their customers. Our results also indicate that service differentiation and functional value are the most important customer values which were considered by experienced managers.