scholarly journals Free-to-Fee Transformation of Industrial Services

2021 ◽  
pp. 109467052110440
Author(s):  
Mekhail Mustak ◽  
Wolfgang Ulaga ◽  
Marcella Grohmann ◽  
Florian von Wangenheim

Industrial firms venturing into services is a common phenomenon in B2B markets. However, companies are often unable to monetize many such services, thus incurring high costs of service provision without benefiting from revenue generation in return. To address this critical but little-studied problem, we investigate how industrial firms can transform existing free services into for-fee offerings. Employing a theories-in-use approach, we explore leading global firms via a cross-section of B2B industries, including automotive, maritime, material handling, medical equipment, mining and construction tools, and petrochemicals. Contingent on the empirics, we precisely characterize and define free industrial services. Based on the internal and external challenges that firms face in free-to-fee (F2F) transformations, we develop a typology classifying free services into four distinct categories: Front-runners, Tugs of War, In-house Shackles, and Dead Ends. For each category, we provide empirical illustrations and identify critical actions and activities that firms deploy to successfully implement F2F transformations along the dimensions of structures, processes, people, and rewards. Thus, we offer guidance on how to overcome both external and internal challenges. Our findings demonstrate that F2F transformations of industrial services are not isolated marketing, sales, or pricing activities but require a concerted effort among all organizational functions involved.

Author(s):  
D.N. Shibaeva ◽  
B.A. Vlasov ◽  
P.A. Shumilov ◽  
S.V. Tereshchenko ◽  
V.V. Bulatov

The paper demonstrates the application of numerical and physical modeling to justify the design of the X-ray fluorescence separator’s material handling system. The Rocky DEM software package is a numerical modeling tool that uses the discrete element method as a mathematical apparatus. In order to increase the efficiency of the X-ray luminescence separation, the authors suggest including an additional element in the separator’s material handling system, i.e., a drum spreader that combines a handling device and an actuating mechanism. It was found out that the best loading of the drum spreader cells, in which the number of several pieces in one cell is reduced by at least 15%, is provided by a Vibrating feeder conveyor with a triangular cross-section of the profiled part of the tray compared with the tray of parabolic cross-section. In addition, the triangular section provides a double decrease in the number of pieces with rotational movement around their axes and, accordingly, an increase of at least 5% in the average velocity of the ore flow movement along the tray. The simulation of the material handling system has shown the need to reduce the height of the end partition of the drum spreader between the cells to 45 mm, which eliminates the collision of ore pieces with the partition and subsequently, their movement in the direction of rotation of the drum spreader on its outer surface, as well as the unpredictable escape of the ore pieces beyond the working space of the separator.


Author(s):  
Christopher Durugbo ◽  
John Ahmet Erkoyuncu

Purpose This article aims to explore the evolution of industrial service uncertainties and the approaches for mitigating these uncertainties. The article also sheds light on how the interplay of potential uncertainties due to service operation challenges shapes the decisiveness of product-centric businesses. Design/methodology/approach To better understand how industrial firms mitigate uncertainties of industrial service provision by their supply chains, we adopted a qualitative multi-case logic methodology. Our approach is based on a research model of uncertainty avoidance and uncertainty reduction which we applied in an exploratory study with three major multi-national firms in the aerospace industry: BAE systems, Lockheed Martin and Rolls-Royce. Findings From the analysis, we found that to mitigate industrial service uncertainty, there is a need for aftermarket-oriented organisation, audit-oriented governance, relationship-oriented intelligence and lifecycle-oriented contracts. We also found that value uncertainty originating from unpredictability in client needs and project scope and structural uncertainty caused by volatility and variability of business structures are also important quandaries in decision making situations of firms towards their supply chains for industrial services. Originality/value The article makes two useful contributions. First it provides an assessment of the nature of uncertainty within operations for providing industrial services. Second, the paper identifies orientations for industrial service uncertainty mitigation. Whereas product-centric businesses firms tend to vary in their states for uncertainty avoidance and reduction, our work suggest similar orientations for uncertainty mitigation across these firms.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jukka Partanen ◽  
Marko Kohtamäki ◽  
Vinit Parida ◽  
Joakim Wincent

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a new scale for measuring the scope (i.e. breadth and depth) of industrial service offering. Design/methodology/approach The scale and its constructs are developed by combining the key insights from prior literature and practitioners gained through expert interviews; validating the constructs by 3 item-construct validation rounds with 9 academic experts; and by testing and further revising the scale, with a sample of 91 manufacturing firms. Findings The distinct contribution of the study is the construction and validation of a new multi-dimensional scale for operationalizing the scope of industrial service offering. In addition, the identified service categories (i.e. pre-sales services, product support services, product life-cycle services, R&D services and operational services) extend the current literature on service typologies. Research limitations/implications The data are somewhat biased toward small- and medium-sized industrial firms. Hence, the development of the measurement in the context of large industrial firms provides one fruitful avenue for further research. Practical implications For managers of industrial firms, the identified service categories provide novel insight on how to develop, bundle and commercialize industrial services to their varying customer segments. Originality/value This study develops a multi-dimensional, fine-grained, statistical and relationship-level scale for measuring the scope of industrial service business. Moreover, this study tests and further develops the scale with quantitative empirical data.


1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
B Lentnek ◽  
A MacPherson ◽  
D Phillips

Presented in this paper is a formal economic model that identifies the optimal intraurban location for a producer-service vendor that caters to the technical needs of spatially dispersed clients in the manufacturing sector. Two major components are incorporated into the model. The first of these describes the oft-cited externalization process among industrial firms, where in-house service provision is selectively abandoned in favor of out-sourcing. The second component describes a vendor location process based on profit maximization, where buyers and sellers are optimally located relative to one another. Normative modeling propositions are then compared with current empirical streams in the literature on producer-service location, the role of manufacturing demand, and the process of selective vertical disintegration among industrial firms. The paper is concluded with a brief research agenda for modeling the intraurban locational behavior of specialist firms in the producer services.


1982 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 605-613
Author(s):  
P. S. Conti

Conti: One of the main conclusions of the Wolf-Rayet symposium in Buenos Aires was that Wolf-Rayet stars are evolutionary products of massive objects. Some questions:–Do hot helium-rich stars, that are not Wolf-Rayet stars, exist?–What about the stability of helium rich stars of large mass? We know a helium rich star of ∼40 MO. Has the stability something to do with the wind?–Ring nebulae and bubbles : this seems to be a much more common phenomenon than we thought of some years age.–What is the origin of the subtypes? This is important to find a possible matching of scenarios to subtypes.


1988 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 71-73
Author(s):  
E. Jannitti ◽  
P. Nicolosi ◽  
G. Tondello

AbstractThe photoabsorption spectra of the carbon ions have been obtained by using two laser-produced plasmas. The photoionization cross-section of the CV has been absolutely measured and the value at threshold, σ=(4.7±0.5) × 10−19cm2, as well as its behaviour at higher energies agrees quite well with the theoretical calculations.


Author(s):  
J. Langmore ◽  
M. Isaacson ◽  
J. Wall ◽  
A. V. Crewe

High resolution dark field microscopy is becoming an important tool for the investigation of unstained and specifically stained biological molecules. Of primary consideration to the microscopist is the interpretation of image Intensities and the effects of radiation damage to the specimen. Ignoring inelastic scattering, the image intensity is directly related to the collected elastic scattering cross section, σɳ, which is the product of the total elastic cross section, σ and the eficiency of the microscope system at imaging these electrons, η. The number of potentially bond damaging events resulting from the beam exposure required to reduce the effect of quantum noise in the image to a given level is proportional to 1/η. We wish to compare η in three dark field systems.


Author(s):  
V. Mizuhira ◽  
Y. Futaesaku

Previously we reported that tannic acid is a very effective fixative for proteins including polypeptides. Especially, in the cross section of microtubules, thirteen submits in A-tubule and eleven in B-tubule could be observed very clearly. An elastic fiber could be demonstrated very clearly, as an electron opaque, homogeneous fiber. However, tannic acid did not penetrate into the deep portion of the tissue-block. So we tried Catechin. This shows almost the same chemical natures as that of proteins, as tannic acid. Moreover, we thought that catechin should have two active-reaction sites, one is phenol,and the other is catechole. Catechole site should react with osmium, to make Os- black. Phenol-site should react with peroxidase existing perhydroxide.


Author(s):  
J.N. Ramsey ◽  
D.P. Cameron ◽  
F.W. Schneider

As computer components become smaller the analytical methods used to examine them and the material handling techniques must become more sensitive, and more sophisticated. We have used microbulldozing and microchiseling in conjunction with scanning electron microscopy, replica electron microscopy, and microprobe analysis for studying actual and potential problems with developmental and pilot line devices. Foreign matter, corrosion, etc, in specific locations are mechanically loosened from their substrates and removed by “extraction replication,” and examined in the appropriate instrument. The mechanical loosening is done in a controlled manner by using a microhardness tester—we use the attachment designed for our Reichert metallograph. The working tool is a pyramid shaped diamond (a Knoop indenter) which can be pushed into the specimen with a controlled pressure and in a specific location.


Author(s):  
J. P. Colson ◽  
D. H. Reneker

Polyoxymethylene (POM) crystals grow inside trioxane crystals which have been irradiated and heated to a temperature slightly below their melting point. Figure 1 shows a low magnification electron micrograph of a group of such POM crystals. Detailed examination at higher magnification showed that three distinct types of POM crystals grew in a typical sample. The three types of POM crystals were distinguished by the direction that the polymer chain axis in each crystal made with respect to the threefold axis of the trioxane crystal. These polyoxymethylene crystals were described previously.At low magnifications the three types of polymer crystals appeared as slender rods. One type had a hexagonal cross section and the other two types had rectangular cross sections, that is, they were ribbonlike.


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