A Systems Approach to Service Development in a Concurrent Engineering Environment

If a service organisation is to ensure continuous growth, long-term profitability, and ongoing competitiveness, it needs to develop new services to attract and satisfy customers. Service development is thus a key challenge for any service organisation. Such service development requires a continuous process that begins with an innovative idea and continues until the new service is introduced to the market. The process involves the planning of systems and processes, the allocation of resources, a process of quality design, the creation of prerequisites, and the ultimate realisation of the original idea. Quality is the most important prerequisite for satisfying customers and ensuring the competitiveness of a service organisation. To guarantee service quality, all phases of the service-development process must be optimised. The present paper develops a framework for a systems approach to service development in a concurrent engineering environment. The framework consists of several key design stages: (i) process design; (ii) quality design; (iii) production-management design; (iv) capacity design; (v) management design; and (vi) physical and technical design. These designs are integrated and conducted systematically in the implementation of the project to raise the overall performance of the new service. A case study is presented to illustrate the implementation process. The case study demonstrates that this integrated and systematic approach is a powerful and useful tool for new service development.