Service management in production companies

"Services are going to move in this decade to being the front edge of the industry" (Ante, Sager 2002, pp. 66-72). In the past, with regard to product development production companies focused mainly on the intermediate product engineering process. In comparison, the service processes within the creation, modelling and marketing phase of the product development are less standardised. Moreover, the service shares in hybrid products are often hand-made styled and also less standardised. Service Management in production companies is focussing on customer expectations, service standards, service marketing and service communication. Especially the fit for service engineering approach helps to bring the service engineering process on a level of systematic standardisation comparable to the product engineering process. It gives answers how the partly "soft factors" driven service processes can be controlled by a strategic management approach. In this fit for service engineering approach the competence card is a key instrument. It helps to structure, measure and evaluate the service processes and gives organizational hints which skills should be improved for a better service engineering performance of production companies.