Service supply chain research: A conceptual model based on business processes

Abstract

When economy transfers from tangible manufacturing to intangible services, it is extremely important to understand whether the lessons learned from manufacturing industries can be directly applied to service supply chains. This paper aims to compare traditional manufacturing industries with service supply chain sector and the results emphasize that the similarities and differences do exist between these two sectors — demonstrating that effective supply chain strategies in one sector may not be appropriate in the other sector. Based on the unique characteristics of service, this study builds a conceptual model of service supply chain.