Bibliometric Method for Manufacturing Servitization: A Review and Future Research Directions

Abstract

To gain sustainable development, it is a trend that manufacturing companies are change the value chain from manufacturing-centric to service-centric. Therefore, the capability of the manufacturing service is as significant as the production ability of enterprises, which reflects the supply chain management (SCM), flexible production, production efficiency, and other indicators of the enterprises. It is the first paper to discuss the sustainability of service-oriented manufacturing using bibliometric analysis. It derives a detailed review and future outlook on the development of manufacturing servitization, indicating the research directions for future development, and provides a valuable reference for researchers in related directions. The bibliometric analysis discusses countries or regions, research areas, authors, keywords, institutions, and journals based on the literature data from the Web of Science (WoS). The results show that research on manufacturing services has gradually received attention since its inception and has become popular since 2008. The papers published from 2008 to 2021 account for 77.62%. The USA is the most studied country on this topic, followed by China and the UK. The International Journal of Production Research regarding the most quantity of articles, and Beihang University is the most influential institution in this field. The largest amount of articles published in the area of “business and economics”, amounting to 1565 articles. In recent years, the main research areas included “Industry 4.0”, “cloud manufacturing (CMfg)”, “Internet of Things (IoT)”, “big data” and “services innovation”. Finally, “digital and intelligent manufacturing” and “product-service systems” are potential research directions for the future.

Synthesizing three decades of digital servitization: a systematic literature review and conceptual framework proposal

“…This leads to the creation of more personalized service offerings, tailored specifically to individual customer requirements. For instance, data analytics capabilities enhance servitization by enabling service personalization, which is fundamental for improving customer satisfaction and fostering longterm loyalty (Chen et al 2022b). -Efficiency and proactivity in service delivery.…”

A Longitudinal History-Based Review of the Product-Service System: Past, Present, and Future

“…Several studies in this cluster discuss manufacturing services. Chen et al [77] point out that in the face of high competitiveness, differentiation through high quality is paramount. In addition, supply chain management (SCM) is used to evaluate the flexibility, where mixed integer linear programming models and meta-heuristic algorithms show promising results for solving SCM problems [78], for example, by contributing to maximum resource utilization.…”

Servitization, Digitalization or Hand in Hand: A Study on the Sustainable Development Path of Manufacturing Enterprises

“…It is generally believed that servitization is a transformation strategy for manufacturing enterprises to create added value by providing services or comprehensive solutions [14]. Nowadays, servitization research is developing in the direction of understanding the complex relationship between enterprise core products and customer-oriented services, along with how they jointly generate added value [15,16]. As for the concept of sustainable development of enterprises, academia has not yet reached a consensus [17,18].…”