Configuring Services and Processes

Many modern product offerings are bundles of physical and service elements. The mass-customization by configuration approach is applicable to services, but may require extensions to traditional configuration techniques. The service production process is more intimately involved with the customer and his/her environment, which may need to be modeled to effectively manage service configuration and delivery. Configurable processes can be imperative for flexible development and provisioning of services. This chapter summarizes differences between sales configuration of services and that of physical goods, and gives an overview of techniques for process configuration.