Identifying product and process configuration requirements in a decentralised service delivery system

Abstract

Designing new service solutions and improving the performance of existing ones have always played a central role in service management. In order to maintain the capability to create innovative solutions, a necessary step is to extend the closed management models towards understanding the systemic nature of services and how systemic characteristics affect service operations management. The main purpose of the study is to identify system characteristics in a service delivery system and to find out how they affect the product and process configurations on the operational level. The main contribution of the study is providing new insight into product and process configurations and how these static artefacts require dynamic information in order to work properly. The results are based on an empirical case study in a decentralised healthcare service delivery system. The practical and future research implications aim at adding systems thinking into service system research and service operations management.