Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to report the state-of-the-art of servitization by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on the topic. The paper aims to define the servitization concept, report on its origin, features and drivers and give examples of its adoption along with future research challenges. Design/methodology/approach -In determining the scope of this study, the focus is on articles that are central and relevant to servitization within a wider manufacturing context. The methodology consists of identifying relevant publication databases, searching these using a wide range of key words and phrases associated with servitization, and then fully reviewing each article in turn. The key findings and their implications for research are all described. Findings -Servitization is the innovation of an organisation's capabilities and processes to shift from selling products to selling integrated products and services that deliver value in use. There are a diverse range of servitization examples in the literature. These tend to emphasize the potential to maintain revenue streams and improve profitability. Practical implications -Servitization does not represent a panacea for manufactures. However, it is a concept of significant potential value, providing routes for companies to move up the value chain and exploit higher value business activities. There is little work to date that can be used to help practitioners. Originality/value -This paper provides a useful review of servitization and a platform on which to base more in-depth research into the broader topic of service-led competitive strategy by drawing on the work from other related research communities.

Servitization is now widely recognised as the process of creating value by adding services to products. Since this term was first coined in the late 1980s, it has been studied by a range of authors seeking to understand the wider implications of service-led competitive strategies in manufacturing. Yet to be explored, however, are the detailed practices and processes needed to deliver integrated products and services. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the form of a real-life servitization process model, and to summarise the key challenges that a typical manufacturer experiences in supporting such a model. Our work is based on an in-depth case study with a leading provider of industrial products and related services. The paper presents this study, an illustration of their servitized process model, and the implications that supporting this model has on the wider manufacturing enterprise.

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With the advent of the new challenge to design a more lean and responsive computerintegrated manufacturing system, firms have been striving to achieve a coherent interaction between technology, organisation, and people to meet this challenge. This paper describes an integrated approach developed for supporting management in addressing technology, organisation and people at the earliest stages of manufacturing automation decision-making. The approach uses both the quality function deployment (QFD) technique and the failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) technique. The principal concepts of both applications are merged together to form a decision tool; QFD in its ability to identify the most suitable manufacturing automation alternative and FMEA in its ability to identify the associated risk with that option to be addressed in the manufacturing system design and implementation phases. In addition, this paper presents the results of a practical evaluation conducted in industry.

The performance of direct workers has a significant impact on the competitiveness of many manufacturing systems.Unfortunately, s ystems designers are ill-equipped to assess this impact during the design process. An opportunity exists to assist designers by expanding the capabilities of popular simulation modelling tools, and using them as a vehicle to better consider human factors during the process of manufacturing system design. To support this requirement, this paper reports on an extensive review of literature that develops a theoretical framework which summarizess the principal factors and relationships that such a modelling tool should incorporate.