The Integration Of Customer Interaction And Physical Production Processes In Service Operations Management

Service Operations Management (SOM) is a discipline focusing on the effective application of resources into the production of high-quality services. With the development of national economy, people are demanding better services. As a result, SOM has become an increasingly vital area in industrial engineering.The analysis and design of Service Production Systems (SPS) is a core research topic in SOM. A classical view for SPS analysis and design is to classify the service production processes into the front-office processes, the ones that include the interactions between service consumers and providers, and the back-office processes which are the processes that do not involve customer interactions. The front-office and back-office processes as a whole determine the efficiency and quality of services, which means the separate management of either front-office or back-office processes cannot lead to satisfied services. As a result, it is required to properly integrate the front-office and back-office processes, i.e. the integrative plan, control, and improvement of front-office and back-office are critical in the successful SOM.Since the front office means the processes that include the interactions between service consumers and providers, they can be also known as the customer interaction processes. And the back office typically include physical production process, workforce training process, service facility maintenance process, etc. Because in many services, the on-time and effective production of physical goods is the prerequisite of the providing of successful services, the physical production process is a very important class of back-office process.This thesis which includes five chapters focused on the methodology for integrating customer interaction and physical production processes and its application in SOM practices. Chapter 1, Introduction, introduced the background, range, fundamentals, contents, and methods of the research. Chapter 2, the Concepts and Preliminary Analysis of the Integration of Customer Interaction and Physical Production Processes, introduced the concepts used in the research through the development of a conceptual framework of SOM. This chapter also did some preliminary analysis of the research topic of this thesis. Chapter 3, the Integration of Customer Interaction and Make-To-Stock (MTS) Processes, discussed the methodology for integrating customer interaction and MTS processes basing on queuing and inventory control theories. Chapter 4, the Integration of Customer Interaction and Make-To-Order (MTO) Processes, discussed the methodology for integrating customer interaction and MTO processes basing on the stochastic programming tool. And at last, chapter 5 summarized the thesis and discussed the future research topics.