After sales service is a major source of competitive advantage for the firms in current business environment. The quality of the service depends on a number of factors among which availability of spare parts at the service centers is the most critical. It is very difficult to maintain the desired inventory of spare parts due to the increasing product complexity and variety. The variation in dem...

Because of today's strong competition, most manufacturing organizations continually try to increase their profits and reduce their costs. Accurate sales forecasting is certainly an inexpensive way to meet these goals because it leads to improved customer service, reduced lost sales and product returns, and more efficient production planning (Doganis et al., 2006). Forecasting future demand is c...

Using financial accounting panel data from the COMPUSTAT database for a representative sample of 722 manufacturing, retailing and wholesaling companies accounting for 30% of US business inventories, we develop a statistical methodology that links managerial decisions related to inventory with accounting returns. We find that superior earnings are associated with the speed of change/responsivene...

The after-sales activities are nowadays acknowledged as a relevant source of revenue, profit and competitive advantage in most manufacturing industries. Top and middle management, therefore, should focus on the definition of a structured business performance measurement system for the after-sales business. In addition, since many actors are involved along the after-sale service supply chain, an...

Nowadays, increasing competition among companies and the huge cost of attracting new customers has led to companies seeking to retain existing customers rather than looking to attract new customers. These factors together have led to the emergence of customer relationship management. Thanks to the development of information and communication technology, especially the Internet, the use of custo...

The fundamental role played by after-sales service in increasing the competitive advantage is the reason why several manufacturing firms are giving greater attention to its measurement. Following an in-depth analysis of the literature concerning the characteristics and dimensions of service in manufacturing, a model for measuring and managing after-sales service is proposed and applied to a lea...

Customers expect to obtain the personalized knowledge when they encounter some problems during the use of product, however, the traditional after-sales service modes are difficult to meet this kind of demand. This paper adopts process-based design method to construct the problem-oriented e-learning process model for product after-sales service and analyze the functions of realizing this process...

The Chinese automotive industry is the largest in the world. Although after-sales services are known to be associated with profitability, it has not obtained its rightful prominence in the Chinese industry. To investigate how the quality of leader-member exchange can influence after-sales services in the Chinese automobile industry, we collected data from individual employees and customers and ...

Performance-based contracting is reshaping service support supply chains in capital intensive industries such as aerospace and defense. Known as Power by the Hour in the private sector and as Performance-Based Logistics (PBL) in defense contracting, it aims to replace traditionally used …xed-price and cost-plus contracts in order to improve product availability and reduce the cost of ownership ...