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Sourcing and Supplier Relationships for Servitized Manufacturers

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Servitization in Industry

Abstract

Servitization implies that manufacturers make decisions about the make or buy of the capabilities required to develop and deliver the service elements of their offerings, and about how to shape and manage supplier relationships. These two decisions are the object of this chapter. Make or buy approaches for developing capabilities by manufacturers are addressed through a framework matching three options (pure make, pure buy and mixed) with four classes of services included in the offering (supporting the sales, the after sales, the design phase and taking over customers’ activities). Four profiles are pointed out: After-sales services seller, After-sales offering integrator, Life-cycle solution seller, Life-cycle solution orchestrator. When an integrator or orchestrator approach is pursued, in particular, managing supplier relationships becomes critical, since large portions of the offer are (developed and) delivered resorting to external suppliers. The characteristics of supplier relationships for service delivery are described according to five dimensions (Information Exchange; Operational linkages; Legal Bonds; Relationship-specific adaptations; Cooperative Norms). Against a “one best way” view of supplier relationship management, the characteristics of the relationship should be devised considering the service elements object of the relationship. Through these conceptual lenses, the chapter offers support to managers facing the servitization journey.

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Acknowledgments

This chapter has been inspired by the activity of the ASAP Service Management Forum (www.asapsmf.org), a community where scholars and practitioners from Italian universities and several leading manufacturing companies, consulting firms and service providers, collaborate in developing research projects and share findings in the product-services management field. The authors are grateful to Heiko Gebauer, Marco Paiola, Mario Rapaccini and Filippo Visintin for their contribution to the research described in this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering, Supply Chain and Service Management Research Laboratory, University of Brescia, via Branze 38, 25123, Brescia, Italy

    Nicola Saccani & Marco Perona

Authors
  1. Nicola Saccani
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  2. Marco Perona
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Correspondence to Nicola Saccani .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Gunter Lay

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Saccani, N., Perona, M. (2014). Sourcing and Supplier Relationships for Servitized Manufacturers. In: Lay, G. (eds) Servitization in Industry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06935-7_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06935-7_15

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-06934-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-06935-7

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