The moment of truth-that instant when consumers experience and judge service quality-is often a deciding factor in business success. Designing Service Excellence: People and Technology provides practical information on the design, management, and organization of many different types of service industries, such as hotels, restaurants, banks and fina

This book presents a general conceptual framework to translate principles of system science and engineering to service design. Services are co-created immaterial, heterogeneous, and perishable state changes. A service system includes the intended benefit to the customer and the structure and processes that accomplish this benefit. The primary focus is on the part of the service system that can reproduce such processes, called here a Service Machine, and methodological guidelines on how to analyze and design them. While the benefit and the process are designed based on the domain knowledge of each respective field, service production systems have common properties. The Service Machine is a metaphor that elicits the fundamental characteristics of service systems that do something efficiently, quickly, or repeatedly for a defined end. A machine is an artifact designed for a purpose, has several parts, such as inputs, energy flows, processors, connectors, and motors assembled as per design specifications. In case of service machine, the components are various contracts assembled on contractual frames. The book discusses Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and Emergency Departments (ED) as cases. They illustrate that service machines need to be structured to adapt to the constraints of the served market acknowledging the fact that services are co-created through the integration of producers’ and customers’ resources. This book is highly recommended for those who are interested in understanding the fundamental concepts of designing service machines.

Service design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between service provider and customers. It is now a growing field of both practice and academic research. Designing for Service brings together a wide range of international contributors to map the field of service design and identify key issues for practitioners and researchers such as identity, ethics and accountability. Designing for Service aims to problematize the field in order to inform a more critical debate within service design, thereby supporting its development beyond the pure methodological discussions that currently dominate the field. The contributors to this innovative volume consider the practice of service design, ethical challenges designers may encounter, and the new spaces opened up by the advent of modern digital technologies.

The Java Embedded Server(TM) from Sun Microsystems, Inc., is a solution for linking consumer devices with services over the Internet. It is based on the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) Service Gateway Specification 1.0. Written by authors who are intimately involved with the development and implementation of the specification, Programming Open Service Gateways with Java Embedded Server(TM) Technology reveals the concepts and inner workings of the Java Embedded Server framework and explains how to program and develop services for open gateways using the Java(TM) programming language. With an emphasis on actual coding, this definitive guide begins by explaining the backdrop in which the residential gateway market emerged. Next, the book discusses the history and mission of the Java Embedded Server product and the OSGi consortium. Throughout the book, the Java Embedded Server technical architecture and the OSGi Service Gateway API are presented with examples and detailed implementations. The book's practical, how-to format shows you how to write code for residential gateway applications that is correct, robust, and efficient while avoiding common traps and pitfalls. Highlights include: Overview of OSGi architecture, including basic concepts and features How to install Java Embedded Server and develop service bundles Design patterns and pitfalls How to use the OSGi standard services: log service and HTTP service OSGi Device Access (DA) service Permission-based security and administration The future undertakings of the OSGi consortium The OSGi Service Gateway Specification 1.0 Programming Open Service Gateways with Java Embedded Server(TM) Technology gives you an insider's perspective on the development process of new applications and services for the residential gateway environment. 0201711028B09102001

A comprehensive marketing text organized around the marketing mix and filled with student-oriented, current examples of the latest marketing topics, concepts and technologies.