Yes / Operations management theory suggests that professional services firms (PSFs) have some distinct operational challenges. The purpose of this paper is to trace the emergence of professional service operations management (PSOM) thinking within a legal partnership. With the impact of deregulation there is an emerging consensus that legal services is changing, due to the socio-economic and political climates in which they operate. The purpose of this paper is to trace the value-add through the legal profession and examine how PSOM practice can be applied within a legal practice in order to create a leaner thinking. The case study analysis suggests a potential methodological mismatch between the core theoretical frameworks, exploring features of effectiveness and efficiency across legal disciplines. This paper makes a contribution through a reflection of PSOM thinking in law.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the design of operational processes in information-intensive service delivery systems. Empirical data is presented which builds upon existing literature within the Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Operations Management (SOM) disciplines. Adopting a theory building mode, the thesis concludes with the formulation of several research propositions which specify the design characteristics of the processes that provide the service concept to the customer. The research addresses a number of gaps in the literature. First, there is little empirical evidence concerning the relationship between the service concept, customer inputs, and process design. Second, service classification schemes promote homogeneous thinking in the design of service systems delivering diverse service concepts. Third, the BPM literature provides generic process design principles which offer limited theoretical insights into the design requirements of operational processes. Finally, there is a need for process design research in information-intensive service organisations. A research framework that integrates theoretical models addressing service process design is investigated using a single case study approach. Fieldwork was carried out over a sixteen-month period in a large electricity supplier in the UK. In contrast to the macro-orientation found within the literature, this study employs a more granular level of analysis to address the unique requirements of ‘service concept – processes’ pairs. This approach results in a number of important findings which, in several instances, are in contradiction to current thinking. First, the results empirically validate the theoretical relationship between service concept, customer inputs, and process design. Different service concepts lead to different process designs, and the more customised the service concept, the more the process is uniquely designed. Significant differences in the design of the individual processes that collectively provide the service concept to the customer are highlighted. The results also provide some new insights into the design of front office – back office activities as well as into the design characteristics of processes characterised by low customer contact. In addition, the study refutes the view that generic process design principles are universally applicable irrespective of the context in which the processes operate. Finally, the research findings show that a process-based view of service systems allows for heterogeneity; that is differences in the design of service delivery processes within the same organisation.

<p>This dissertation contributes to the rapidly growing empirical research area in the field of operations management. It contains two essays, tackling two different sets of operations management questions which are motivated by and built on field data sets from two very different industries --- air cargo logistics and retailing. </p><p>The first essay, based on the data set obtained from a world leading third-party logistics company, develops a novel and general Bayesian hierarchical learning framework for estimating customers' spillover learning, that is, customers' learning about the quality of a service (or product) from their previous experiences with similar yet not identical services. We then apply our model to the data set to study how customers' experiences from shipping on a particular route affect their future decisions about shipping not only on that route, but also on other routes serviced by the same logistics company. We find that customers indeed borrow experiences from similar but different services to update their quality beliefs that determine future purchase decisions. Also, service quality beliefs have a significant impact on their future purchasing decisions. Moreover, customers are risk averse; they are averse to not only experience variability but also belief uncertainty (i.e., customer's uncertainty about their beliefs). Finally, belief uncertainty affects customers' utilities more compared to experience variability. </p><p>The second essay is based on a data set obtained from a large Chinese supermarket chain, which contains sales as well as both wholesale and retail prices of un-packaged perishable vegetables. Recognizing the special characteristics of this particularly product category, we develop a structural estimation model in a discrete-continuous choice model framework. Building on this framework, we then study an optimization model for joint pricing and inventory management strategies of multiple products, which aims at improving the company's profit from direct sales and at the same time reducing food waste and thus improving social welfare.</p><p>Collectively, the studies in this dissertation provide useful modeling ideas, decision tools, insights, and guidance for firms to utilize vast sales and operations data to devise more effective business strategies.</p> / Dissertation

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-22T22:10:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 diego.pdf: 1646868 bytes, checksum: 184608f031ef1b7a63b685a26977dde9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-10-29 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This paper presents a model for programming calibration services balance, applied to a calibration laboratory installed in the city of Manaus, in order to promote improvements in the management of productive capacity. The calibration of the measuring instrument is part of the metrological services that support enterprises that have a quality management system certificate. The proposed model, seeking to align itself with these management practices, adopts the structure of the mapping process organized phases input, processing and output. The research method used to construct the model is the literature in the areas of production management, service management and metrology. This consultation revealed some difficulties because the approach is relatively new in the service area. In this context, we surveyed the main features present in any operation targeting the sort of service calibration laboratory. The classification was established by combining the characteristics of the activities of front line service represented by the calibration scale and the rear of activities by managing the laboratory calibration, resulting in framing shop services based on the volume of customers served by day at the plant. In our case, the high degree of standardization and repeatability in this provision of the calibration scale, facilitated the use of tools of production planning and control, through the technical choice of sequencing of work orders and their proper calibration schedule, being pulled to the type selected. To evaluate this process were investigated performance measures consistent with the service sector, revealing management indicators applicable in the following the calibration of instruments. The results contributed to increasing productivity in services researched, reflecting the adoption of certain management practices based on principles of production system used in the manufacturing area. / Este trabalho apresenta um modelo para programação dos serviços de calibração de balança, aplicado a um laboratório de calibração instalado na cidade de Manaus, com o objetivo de promover melhorias na gestão da capacidade produtiva. A calibração de instrumento de medição faz parte dos serviços de metrologia que dão suporte às empresas que possuem um sistema de gestão da qualidade certificado. O modelo proposto, buscando alinhar-se com essas práticas de gestão, adota a estrutura do mapeamento de processo organizado nas fases entrada, transformação e saídas. O método de pesquisa utilizado para construir o modelo foi o bibliográfico nas áreas de administração da produção, gestão de serviços e metrologia. Essa consulta revelou algumas dificuldades devido à abordagem ser relativamente nova na área de serviços. Nesse contexto, foram pesquisadas as principais características presentes em qualquer operação visando classificar os serviços do laboratório de calibração. A classificação foi estabelecida ao combinar as características das atividades de linha de frente representada pelo serviço de calibração de balança e as atividades de retaguarda por meio do gerenciamento do laboratório de calibração, resultando no enquadramento de loja de serviços com base no volume de clientes atendidos por dia na unidade produtiva. No caso estudado, o alto grau de padronização e repetitividade presente na prestação do serviço calibração de balança facilitaram o uso de ferramentas de planejamento e controle da produção, através da escolha da técnica de sequenciamento das ordens de serviços de calibração e sua devida programação, sendo a do tipo puxada selecionada. Para avaliar esse processo foram pesquisadas medidas de desempenho compatíveis com o setor de serviços, revelando indicadores gerenciais aplicáveis no seguimento de calibração de instrumentos. Os resultados obtidos contribuíram para o aumento da produtividade no setor de serviços pesquisado, refletindo a adoção de algumas práticas de gerenciamento baseado em princípios do sistema da produção utilizados na área de manufatura.

This dissertation is initiated from an increased awareness within industry of the importance of services in general and of after-sales services in particular. The scope of this research is to analyse how the specific characteristics of after-sales services affect a company’s manufacturing strategy, which in effect should become an operations strategy not only considering the manufacturing of goods. Considering the after-sales service as a product, consisting of both good and service characteristics, the objective of this dissertation is to develop conceptual models for an improved long-term management of operations where production of both new goods and after-sales services are competing for the same or similar resources. Specifically, the structural decision categories of a manufacturing strategy, process technology, capacity, facilities, and vertical integration, are adapted to include the demands of after-sales service products. The research result is an extension of the existing manufacturing strategy framework, which is transformed towards a more general operations strategy framework capable of providing managerial guidance for a larger set of products than just pure goods. Tools are developed for analysing what processes would be suitable for the after-sales services, and whether the after-sales processes should be merged with, or separated from, the new goods process. An extended long term service capacity framework is also introduced, looking specifically at the needs of after-sales service operations. Through seven case studies as well as a survey of 45 Italian providers of both manufactured goods and services, the after-sales supply chain is mapped and classified with respect to vertical integration and facilities.

The purpose of this DBA is to develop a Customisation Blueprint so that consultancies can provide a more tailored, responsive service to clients. This study seeks to find out what matters to clients when purchasing consultancy, how clients substantiate this and how it affects their decision-making. This study also seeks to establish if the factors influencing buyer’s evaluation of the consultant can be favourably influenced by the consultants. By fulfilling client requirements more precisely and effectively, consultants are able to better serve their clients. In this way they are also able to enhance both ongoing relationship and reputation. The history of consultancy is examined to establish the unfurling and growth of the industry and to understand the forces which have shaped its evolution. Relational and Operations literature is examined to establish what previous research is able to contribute to this quest for understanding what consultants need to do to better serve their clients. Financial Services and Utilities are the two largest private-sector buyers of consultancy. Managers involved in the purchase of consulting services from a selection of these companies were interviewed to capture how consultants are engaged and what selection criteria are the most important. A combination of guidance from the literature and an understanding of what matters to clients is used to develop a systematic approach for consultants to more clearly identify and articulate client needs and thereby serve them better. The outcome is the development of a Customisation Blueprint, a framework to personalise responsiveness and thus enhance customer satisfaction.

Web services are often used for search computing where data is retrieved from servers providing information of different kinds. Such data providing web services return a set of objects for a given set of parameters without any side effects. There is need to enable general and scalable search capabilities of data from data providing web services, which is the topic of this Thesis. The Web Service MEDiator (WSMED) system automatically provides relational views of any data providing web service operations by reading the WSDL documents describing them. These views can be queried with SQL. Without any knowledge of the costs of executing specific web service operations the WSMED query processor automatically and adaptively finds an optimized parallel execution plan calling queried data providing web services. For scalable execution of queries to data providing web services, an algebra operator PAP adaptively parallelizes calls in execution plans to web service operations until no significant performance improvement is measured, based on monitoring the flow from web service operations without any cost knowledge or extensive memory usage. To comply with the Everything as a Service (XaaS) paradigm WSMED itself is implemented as a web service that provides web service operations to query and combine data from data providing web services. A web based demonstration of the WSMED web service provides general SQL queries to any data providing web service operations from a browser. WSMED assumes that all queried data sources are available as web services. To make any data providing system into a data providing web service WSMED includes a subsystem, the web service generator, which generates and deploys the web service operations to access a data source. The WSMED web service itself is generated by the web service generator. / eSSENCE

The purpose of this DBA is to develop a Customisation Blueprint so that consultancies can provide a more tailored, responsive service to clients. This study seeks to find out what matters to clients when purchasing consultancy, how clients substantiate this and how it affects their decision-making. This study also seeks to establish if the factors influencing buyer¿s evaluation of the consultant can be favourably influenced by the consultants. By fulfilling client requirements more precisely and effectively, consultants are able to better serve their clients. In this way they are also able to enhance both ongoing relationship and reputation. The history of consultancy is examined to establish the unfurling and growth of the industry and to understand the forces which have shaped its evolution. Relational and Operations literature is examined to establish what previous research is able to contribute to this quest for understanding what consultants need to do to better serve their clients. Financial Services and Utilities are the two largest private-sector buyers of consultancy. Managers involved in the purchase of consulting services from a selection of these companies were interviewed to capture how consultants are engaged and what selection criteria are the most important. A combination of guidance from the literature and an understanding of what matters to clients is used to develop a systematic approach for consultants to more clearly identify and articulate client needs and thereby serve them better. The outcome is the development of a Customisation Blueprint, a framework to personalise responsiveness and thus enhance customer satisfaction.

Submitted by Maike Costa (maiksebas@gmail.com) on 2016-04-19T13:49:51Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 5424467 bytes, checksum: 801d02752f22cdbc2f419432ff437a77 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-19T13:49:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 5424467 bytes, checksum: 801d02752f22cdbc2f419432ff437a77 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-05-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The main objetive of this work is to develop a methodology for the implementation of lean manufacturing in hospital operations. For this purpose, it was initially performed an analysis of the relevant literature on the topics: lean manufacturing, hospital operations and lean services (focusing on health care services). Based on the literature, some categories of lean health were identified. The research is classified as qualitative, applied and exploratory, and was conducted through multiple case studies in three hospital operations in São Paulo state. Based on the literature and case studies, it was possible to suggest guidelines for the application of the lean techniques, organizing them in order to compose the proposed methodology for the implementation of the lean in hospital operations. First the methodology consisted of two phases: (I) initiatives to implement the lean; (II) the implementation of the lean techniques and the development of lean culture. After it was submitted to the experts' analysis on the subject (researchers, consultants and hospital management) with two goals: to be refined, or improved, based on the suggestions of the experts. The experts evaluated the methodology based on Platts’s (1993) criteria: feasibility, usability and utility. After the refinement and avaliation of the experts, the final proposal remained with the two phases, however, some suggestions were made and were considered to the upgrading of the methodology. The final methodology showed predominatly modifications in the second phase and considered the following aspects: the support of the senior management, the training of a team to manage the improvement projects, the empowerment of the improvement teams, the development of leaders in the lean technique, the binding of the implementation of the lean to the strategic planning, the performance of the improvement projects, as well as the management of all projects through the PDCA, a training program to the employees, the application of the kaizen events; the application of the Ishikawa diagram to identify the root cause of the losses and the development of appropriate performance indicators. The experts considered that the methodology: can be followed, can be easily followed and provide a useful step in the lean implementation on the operations health. / Esta dissertação tem como principal objetivo desenvolver uma metodologia para implementação da produção enxuta em operações hospitalares. Para tanto, inicialmente foi realizada a análise da literatura relevante nos temas: produção enxuta, operações hospitalares e produção enxuta em operações de serviços (com foco nos serviços de assistência à saúde). Com base na revisão da literatura foram identificadas algumas categorias de análise da produção enxuta em operações hospitalares. A pesquisa classifica-se como qualitativa, aplicada e exploratória, e foi realizada por meio de estudos de casos múltiplos em três operações hospitalares do estado de São Paulo. Fundamentando-se na literatura e nos estudos de casos foi possível sugerir diretrizes para aplicação das técnicas enxutas, organizando-as de forma a compor a metodologia proposta para implementação da produção enxuta em operações hospitalares. A proposta inicial da metodologia consistia em duas fases: inciativas para a implementação da produção enxuta; implementação das técnicas enxutas e desenvolvimento da cultura lean. Após a elaboração final, esta foi submetida a análise de especialistas no tema (pesquisadores, consultores e gestoras hospitalares) com dois objetivos: ser refinada, ou seja, aprimorada com base nas sugestões de melhoria dos especialistas; ser avaliada tomando como base os critérios sugeridos por Platts (1993): utilização prática, facilidade de uso e utilidade. Após o refinamento e avaliação dos especialistas, a proposta final permaneceu com as duas fases, entretanto foram feitas algumas sugestões, as quais foram consideradas para o aprimoramento da metodologia. A proposta final da metodologia apresentou predominantemente modificações na segunda fase e considerou os seguintes aspectos: o apoio da alta gestão; a formação e capacitação de uma equipe para gerir os projetos de melhoria; a capacitação das equipes de melhoria; o desenvolvimento de líderes em lean; a vinculação da implantação da produção enxuta ao planejamento estratégico; a implementação sistêmica; a execução dos projetos de melhoria assim como a gestão de todos os projetos por meio do PDCA; um programa de treinamento para os colaboradores; a utilização de eventos kaizen; a utilização do diagrama de Ishikawa para identificar a causa raiz das perdas; e, o desenvolvimento de indicadores de desempenho adequados. Quanto à avaliação da metodologia, os especialistas a consideraram: passível de ser utilizada na prática, fácil de ser usada e útil.

Submitted by Maike Costa (maiksebas@gmail.com) on 2016-04-22T14:27:24Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 1636388 bytes, checksum: d927078bb93538d3dca6ab935a67525c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-22T14:27:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 1636388 bytes, checksum: d927078bb93538d3dca6ab935a67525c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-07-24 / Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq / In spite of its origins in the manufacturing sector, lean production has been recognized in service organizations as a management model which is able to assist managers to minimize or eliminate their waste, reducing costs and increasing the efficiency of an organization. Academic literature provides empirical evidence of the application of lean tools in the service sector, such as in hospitality, call centers, insurance companies, and especially in hospitals. Although it is possible to find practical applications, it cannot be stated that all processes have the same degree of applicability of lean production. Therefore, this dissertation investigated the applicability of lean production in different types of service processes in order to understand the implications of volume and variety dimensions to the implementation of a lean system. Thus, it was initially performed a literature survey to identify the current state of the research on the application of lean production in the service processes. In the field research, six different service processes were selected and a case study was conducted for each: technology consulting, medical consultation, car sales, car maintenance and repair, road bus service and fast-food. The first step was to identify the position of each of the processes in the volume and variety matrix. Then, the influence of each dimension on the applicability of lean tools was verified, disclosing positive influences, negative influences or even demonstrating those dimensions that did not have any influence on applicability. It was observed that there are characteristics that act as facilitators and other as barriers to the applicability of lean service. Although it is possible to isolate facilitators and barriers, it can also be concluded that the applicability of lean production in service operations depends on the existence of various process dimensions acting together. / Embora tenha seu início no setor de manufatura, a produção enxuta tem sido reconhecida em organizações de serviços como um modelo de gestão capaz de auxiliar os gestores a amenizar ou eliminar seus desperdícios, diminuindo os custos e aumentando a eficiência de uma organização. Há na literatura evidências empíricas da aplicação das ferramentas enxutas no setor de serviços, como em hotelaria, call centers, companhias de seguros, e principalmente em hospitais. Embora seja possível encontrar aplicações práticas, não se pode afirmar que todos os processos tenham o mesmo grau de aplicabilidade da produção enxuta. Assim, esta dissertação investigou a aplicabilidade da produção enxuta em diferentes tipos de processos de serviços, de forma a compreender as implicações das dimensões de volume e variedade para a implantação de um sistema enxuto. Para tanto, foi realizado inicialmente um levantamento bibliográfico para identificar o estado atual da pesquisa sobre a aplicação da produção enxuta nos processos de serviços. Na pesquisa de campo, foram selecionados seis processos de serviços distintos que foram o foco de análise dos estudos de caso: consultoria de tecnologia, consulta médica, atendimento para vendas de veículos novos e seminovos, manutenção de veículos, transporte rodoviário de passageiros e fast-food. O primeiro passo foi identificar o posicionamento de cada um dos processos na matriz de volume e variedade. A partir daí, foi feita a verificação das influências de cada dimensão na aplicabilidade das ferramentas enxutas e foram identificadas aquelas dimensões que apresentavam influências positivas, influências negativas ou mesmo aquelas dimensões que não apresentavam nenhuma influência na aplicabilidade. Observou-se que existem características que atuam como facilitadores e outras como barreiras na aplicabilidade da produção enxuta nos serviços. Embora seja possível isolar facilitadores e barreiras, pode-se concluir também que aplicabilidade da produção enxuta em serviços depende da existência de várias dimensões do processo atuando em conjunto.