Service system structure

The structure of a service system should be matched to the requirements of customers. It is necessary to trade off the ability to handle the variety and complexity of the needs of different customers with the speed and efficiency of performing the required tasks. This payer develops a categorization of service system structures based on an analysis of their relative performance and how this performance is affected by the nature of the tasks that have to be performed. The categorization has the same property as the Hayes-Wheelwright categorization of manufacturing systems in that firms should aim at being near the diagonal of the matrix relating customer requirements and structural alternatives. The service system categorization also provides useful insight into the organization of manufacturing firms. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.