Service Provision in Knowledge-Based Industries – A Global Study on the

Abstract

In today’s times, more than ever cost competition and high demands of globalized value-adding chains put strong pressure on small- and medium-sized toolmakers. As an exclusive differentiation in price is not an option, new means for achieving sustainable competitive positions have to be found. A promising approach for differentiation is to enhance the existing range of products by offering customer-specific services within so-called industrial product-service-systems. However, the lack of local presence inhibits the toolmakers’ abilities to deliver these services to their global customers. To address these challenges the European R&D-project TIPSS has the objective to develop suitable methods, techniques and technologies, for toolmakers to improve their local and global performance thus enabling them to offer industrial product-service-systems on a global scale. The basis of the project is a large scale toolmaker and parts producer survey focusing on service provision. The survey identifies the global footprint of toolmakers regarding the provision of tool-related services. Key findings of the survey with respect to designing industrial product-service-systems are presented in this paper