This is an important contemporary concept that applies to manufacturers facing competitive pressures to re-conceive their product-oriented strategies in favour of service-oriented strategies.
Your assignment will review the existing literature on servitization, and then will discuss how it has, or how it may, affect a named international company. You may chose the company you use as a basis for the discussion BUT it must have a substantial presence in the UK.
There is a substantial body of literature available on this topic so it will be important for you to identify which papers are the most suitable for your work. There are also literature reviews on servitization, and whilst such reviews are recommended as good starting points for your research, they must NOT form the sole basis for your literature review.
The line of discussion established in your paper must be service operations, so you must discuss the implications of servitization for service operations. What capabilities will the company you are discussing need to develop? What are the cost and resource implications for it? How will these issues vary for different types of servitization?
The purpose of the assignment is to enable you to demonstrate that you can understand key conceptual principles and are able to interpret those principles in relation to a real-world example.
The required structure (and approximate word count):
• Introduction (500)
o Introduce the subject. Tell the reader what your paper is about, simply explain what servitization is, using one or two examples drawn from the practitioner literature, such as Rolls-Royce power-by-the-hour.
o Explain briefly why servitization can be problematic (you will expand on this in your literature review).
o Then briefly introduce the company you will discuss and, in one sentence, summarise why servitization is, or will be, relevant to its future.
• Literature (1000)
o Substantial section that identifies and discusses the key original articles along with a number of recent academic papers on the subject.
o The purpose of this section is to explain in detail to the reader what servitization is, and which academics have contributed to the discussion.
o This section should describe the different forms of servitization, and what the literature says about the problems companies may face when servitizing.
• Discussion (750)
o In this section you discuss how servitization concepts have/may affect your chosen company if/when it adopts a servitization strategy.
o Start by introducing your company concentrating on how telling the reader how their customer offering will change as it moves from product-oriented to service-oriented.
o Then discuss the training, resourcing and cost implications the company may face, making sure you cite relevant literature again.
• Conclusions (250)
o Short summary and reflections of your key points. What do you want the reader to remember from your assignment?
• References
o At least 10 academic papers from quality journals.
o Additional references from non-academic sources for any sources you have used to tell the reader about the company you discuss.
