ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces key issues of service operations management. Services are intangible and are provided and used at specific times because they can not be stored for later. Consumers may participate in the service provision as a co-producer. A service package includes supporting facilities, facilitating goods, information, explicit and implicit services. It is a bundle of goods and services. Topics covered in this chapter include delivery system and service encounters, location and servicescapes, capacity planning, quality and managing the information in service operations:
As machine technology once changed an agricultural economy into an industrial economy, today’s information technology is transforming our industrial economy into a service economy. (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons 2006)
It is nearly impossible to go through a day without taking part in some kind of a service design. The most obvious services include hotels and guesthouses, hairdressing and using an automated teller machine (ATM). Other examples of a service that are taken granted are utilities, communication (inbound – cinema, TV, radio; and two way – telephone, internet), transportation, food. Today it is difficult to think of everyday life without these services. Services always have been a part of humanity – where there are people, they have demands that need to be met with services. The conceptual framework of services, in the form of a formalized business operation that are strictly disciplined, dates back no further than a couple of decades.