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Schlagwort: Smart Services

Service Lunch: „Eating, Learning, Networking“ – Data Driven Innovation

In this short presentation, examples of applications of data in manufacturing companies will be shown along with some concrete examples together with the approach of how data was used to improve products and processes.
Key Speakers

Dr. Sebastian Domaschke
Managing Consultant

Dr. Christof Niemann-Mall
Senior Consultant

Registration is open until Thursday, September 28. Participants will receive an access link after registration. See also the flyer for more information.

Smart Service Summit: building resilience in a changing world

The volatility we have experienced recently was unexpected, and society needed to be sufficiently prepared. Unforeseen resource shortages, logistics and skilled people have further challenged our society. We see today that the markets are driven by the scarcity of resources rather than demand. Coupled with this is the need to integrate sustainability into our behaviour. All of this results in a wave of short-term and rushed management decisions that are not sustainable in the medium- and long-term and, in many cases, create unforeseen consequences that, on an individual basis, make sense yet, on a systemic basis, make the situation worse. 

It became evident that we need to be more resilient and able to deal with the changes our rapidly changing world throws at us. Resilience can be achieved by rapidly adapting to a dramatically changed situation (through resourcefulness, adaptability, and flexibility) (Conz & Magnani, 2020). Capacity increases can achieve this by improving the system’s ability to absorb shocks (e.g., by more redundancy, robustness, or agility). Smart services can provide the capability to adapt within ecosystems. By their inherent design of resource integration in socio-technical systems (Vargo et al., 2018), services systems build up the dynamic capabilities to rearrange existing resources for adapting to dynamically changing needs.

The smart services summit 2023 will be dedicated to the capability of smart service systems to support resilience and build sustainability. Contributions are welcome in the following fields:

  • How can smart services create value in dynamic ecosystems?
  • How can dynamic capabilities be developed?
  • How are resilience and sustainability in smart service systems interrelated?
  • How can resilience and short-term value optimisation go hand in hand?
  • What are practical examples and best practice experiences from companies?
  • What role does AI play in building resilience and helping with sustainability?

Contributions are invited both from practitioners and scholars. We prefer emerging work that will create discussions; the studies could be based on cases and theoretical frameworks. Accepted papers will be published in Springer proceedings as 12-page papers. 

Prof. Dr Shaun West and Dr. Jürg Meierhofer

Registration

Submissions

Submissions can be entered here: EASYCHAIR

Abstracts must be made using the abstract template: CLICK HERE.

Full papers must be submitted using the Springer Word Template: CLICK HERE.

All submissions will undergo a blind review process. Further information can be found here: https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/conference-proceedings/conference-proceedings-guidelines

Publication

The proceedings will be published in by Springer

Prior versions: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-72090-2

The co-chairs may contact authors directly for inclusion in an MDPI special call on „Service Ecosystem: Resilience and Sustainability”.

Venue

The conference will be held in Zürich on 27 October 2023.

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to:

Jürg Meierhofer, Lectuerer for Business Engineering and Operations Management (juerg.meierhofer@zhaw.ch),

Shaun West, Professor for Product-Service System Innovation (shaun.west@hslu.ch)

Sponsors

Home – Databooster

Zurich University of Applied Sciences/ZHAW

HSLU Hochschule Luzern – HSLU

Experts, Experts, Experts…

The Data Innovation Alliance’s second Expert Day in March 2023 was a hub of activity as experts from four key areas – Smart Maintenance, NLP & AI Technology, Spatial Data, and Smart Services – gathered to share their insights and mingle with researchers and industry professionals. The event kicked off with leaders from each Expert Group pre-discussing their plans for 2023, generating a wealth of innovative ideas for joint events and initiatives, and paving the way for exciting collaborations in the (near) future.

But that’s not all! The NLP and Digital Health groups are teaming up to bring you joint events that will revolutionize the way we approach data. And with the next Expert Day set for August 2023, featuring four expert groups once again, get ready for even more ground-breaking discussions and initiatives, organized jointly with other Innovation Boosters. Keep an eye on our events calendar for more information.

While the keynote speech may not have met expectations in terms of insights, it set the stage for what was to come – dynamic discussions and collaborations in the expert group break sessions. To ensure everyone had access to the wealth of information shared, short summaries of the discussions were written by participants in each room.

In short, the second Expert Day was a superb success, bringing together a diverse group of experts to debate their ideas and shape the future of data innovation.

Smart Services for Sustainability – Circular Servitization by Jürg Meierhofer

The Smart Services for Sustainability – Circular Servitization discussion was a dynamic conversation among highly experienced individuals from different industries. They explored how value is created in business ecosystems, focusing on both individual and organizational perspectives.

It was inspiring to have diverse industry representatives in the same room and to create a common understanding. Departing from economic value creation, the group extended its scope to ecological factors. An intense discussion arose about how environmental value can be created without negatively impacting economic value. Statements that economic value creation is still the predominant requirement were made, meaning that in many cases, even a slight reduction of economic value for the sake of ecological value would be treated with suspicion. As sustainability becomes increasingly relevant and regulations loom, the balance between economic and ecological value may shift in the near future.

Overall, the Smart Services for Sustainability – Circular Servitization discussion was thought-provoking and left participants eager to continue exploring the intersection of business and sustainability.

Spatial Data by Reik Leiterer

In a room buzzing with ideas, each data expert chimed into the discussion about the creation of a platform that would benefit cantons, individuals, and service providers. There was a shared understanding that it might not be possible to cater to everyone’s needs and that a simpler visualization and analytics approach may be the way forward. However, some uncertainties still remained, such as identifying where the necessary data is available and how it can be integrated, setting limits, and ensuring that data is not misinterpreted. Despite these challenges, the group remained enthusiastic about the potential benefits of the platform and is looking forward to overcoming these obstacles.

NLP & AI Technology by Lina Scarborough

The group opened the floor with how chatbots are great to answer questions, but what happens when users don’t know where to begin asking questions? This is a common issue in legal situations where the average client may not have the necessary background to understand what information is needed. Retrieval augmented language models like KATIE have emerged as a solution to this problem. These models use grounded reasoning and promote a chain of thought to handle complex queries and create a context for users who may not know what subset of questions to ask.

With the rise of machine-generated text, it’s becoming more difficult to distinguish between human and machine-generated content. While probabilistic token selection and frameworks like SCARECROW can help scrutinize machine-generated text, it can still be difficult, to nigh impossible, to identify. However, ChatGPTZero, an app that uses watermarking to create a statistical fingerprint in the sampling method, claims to be able to detect whether an essay is written by ChatGPT or a human – for instance, ChatGPT generally makes redundancy errors whereas humans make grammatical mistakes. This approach hopes to maintain the integrity of human-generated content in the face of increased machine-generated text.

The discussion then flowed into a lively and engaging presentation on how AI technology can make the tricky SQL “minefield” as easy to navigate as a soccer player scoring a goal – literally, by demonstrating SQL prompts on the soccer World Cup!

Smart Maintenance by Melanie Geiger

The five use case presentations highlighted the versatility of data technology in different applications, showcasing how it can be adapted to meet various needs. With input data ranging from domain knowledge to error log data, these use cases demonstrated how AI models can process and analyze complex data sets to provide valuable insights and decision support.

One of the key themes that emerged was the use of AI for diverse condition-based maintenance, specifically anomaly detection and fault diagnosis. By leveraging ML algorithms, these use cases were able to detect potential issues and predict equipment failures for timely maintenance and preventing downtime.

The highlight of the event was not only the apèro treats, but the opportunity to engage with the 60 participants and learn about their projects, challenges, solutions, and ideas for collaboration. Many attendees seemed to share this sentiment, as numerous participants were still engrossed in conversation at the end of the event, and some discussions had to be continued elsewhere. Those who wish to follow up on these conversations have the option to do so at SDS2023. On a more lowkey note, maybe you wanted to add someone on LinkedIn and send them a message. Here you go, this is your reminder!

Our conclusion of the event: the Alliance has many experts in various subtopics of data-driven value creation, but only together we can move faster.

Service Event: “Lernen, Netzwerken” – Contracts for Advanced Series

Organized by the Smart Services Expert Group

Contracts for Advanced Series

A Playbook to Guide from Concept to Completion

When selling advanced services, the conceptual and contractual complexities of such contracts are all too often underestimated. Experience shows that this is especially true when selling into traditional B2B markets.

Please register at: https://ch.xing-events.com/digitalization_and_service
You can also find all relevant information in the flyer!

Smart Services Summit: Smart Services creating sustainability

As the adoption of Smart Services continues to accelerate, we see an opportunity to apply the emerging technology to provide new value propositions and business models that provide tangible sustainability outcomes that help us and the planet. In 2021 we held the Smart Service Summit “in person” at a fantastic location overlooking the lake of Zurich. The focus was on the impact of COVID-19, and in hindsight, we were between two outbreaks. This year we would like to leave COVID-19 behind us and look to build a brighter future. We are this year going to focus on sustainability as we think it is time to give equal weight to the social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainability.

The summit in 2022 aims to assess new and emerging services that are enabled by technology and where the services are co-delivered to support sustainability. In doing so, we hope to answer some of these questions:

  • how is the service quality and value impacted through digital technologies?
  • how can you transform the customer (or a third party) into a service partner?
  • how does collaborative working impact value co-creation?
  • what is the impact of smart services on customer experience?
  • how does the nature of the service delivery change?
  • how can organizations be enabled to foster digital value co-creation?

All of the papers should consider one or more of the three pillars of sustainability (i.e., social, economic, and environmental). This is important as this consideration will allow us to build a sustainable future.

As with previous years, we are looking for early-stage research and will again publish the proceedings with Springer. Furthermore, we will use industry to set the scene and the context from their position and follow them with impactful academic presentations. We anticipate that we will have a physical summit in Zürich!

All papers will undergo a blind peer-review process. The articles will be published again with Springer. Accepted papers will be presented in person in Zurich.

The link to the prior proceedings is: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-97042-0

Call for participation

Enter your submission here: https://easychair.org/cfp/3S-2022

Summit Chairs

Prof. Dr. Shaun West, Hochschule Luzern, shaun.west@HSLU.ch

Dr. Jürg Meierhofer, ZHAW School of Engineering, juerg.meierhofer@zhaw.ch

Keywords

Smart Services; Industry4.0; Product-Service Systems; Value Co-creation; Service Quality; Sustainanablty; Service Science; Service Design.

Submission procedure

Full paper submission: 11 September 2022

Acceptance of papers is based on the full paper (up to 8 pages). All papers will be peer reviewed.

Registration

Register for the event here: https://www.xing-events.com/5thSmartServicesSummit.html

Service Event: “Lernen, Netzwerken”

Organized by the Smart Services and Smart Maintenance Expert Groups

Showcase Kistler & Digitalization

In this afternoon event, we will introduce the digitalization initiatives of Kistler and then focus on the digital service initiatives with a focus on pilot projects in various fields of advanced services. The event will be rounded off with a presentation of a turn-key solution by Kistler innovation lab and digital hub, followed by a tour around the company and apéro.

Please register at: https://ch.xing-events.com/digitalization_and_service
Number of places limited
You can also find all relevant information in the flyer!

Service Lunch Smart Services: Transformation of the service business of Swiss industrial companies

With Boris Ricken, AWK Group

COVID-19 has posed enormous challenges to Swiss industrial companies over the past two years. The service sector has been particularly hard hit, as it relies on personal interactions with customers. At the same time, digital technologies have changed the service business.

In his presentation, Boris Ricken shed light on the implications of these developments for Swiss industrial companies. He showed how longterm trends in service provision have been reinforced, e.g., by local service provision in combination with central products and services. Given this, different fields of action were elaboarated, among others for new digital services and business models.

The presentation was accompanied by lively discussion and input from the participants. The expert group Smart Services is a very active platform for sharing and growing knowledge and expertise in this field.

Contact person: Jürg Meierhofer

Service Lunch: “Essen, Lernen, Netzwerken”

Organized by the Smart Services Expert Group

Transformation des Servicegeschäftes von Schweizer Industriefirmen

COVID-19 hat in den letzten zwei Jahren Schweizer Industrieunternehmen vor enorme Herausforderungen gestellt. Der Servicebereich war besonders stark betroffen, da dieser auf persönliche Interaktionen mit Kunden angewiesen ist. Zugleich haben digitale Technologien das Servicegeschäft verändert.
Was sind nun die Auswirkungen dieser Entwicklungen auf Schweizer Industrieunternehmen? Wie könnten zukünftige Entwicklungen im Servicegeschäft aussehen? Lassen Sie uns das gemeinsam diskutieren.

Please register at: https://ch.xing-events.com/ServiceIndustry
Online by Microsoft Teams, Participants get an access link after registration
You can also find all relevant information in the flyer!

Smart Service Innovation for Adapting to the Pandemic Situation – Successful Smart Services Summit 2021

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By Jürg Meierhofer

On October 22, the expert group Smart Services welcomed worldwide top experts to the fourth Smart Services Summit. The focus was on how Smart Services allow firms to adapt in the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples of remote and collaborative working have created new forms of co-delivery where customers are integrated into the service processes. Such a change requires a mindset change for more traditional firms as the service model migrates from ‘do it for you’ to ‘do it yourself’ or some mix of ‘do it together’. Considering service science, the switch makes perfect sense as it means that the full set of resources within the ecosystem are now being used rather than only a part. Services can be delivered faster and at lower costs with the support of new technologies and when working with the customer in a co-delivery mode. The changes are leading to new value propositions and business models today and will lead to an evolution in Smart Services in the future. The changes themselves must be understood, and we may need to consider new or different implementation and delivery models for Smart Services. These new working approaches may also requite use to re-evaluate both training and education.

Across the papers and presentations, it became apparent that digital service innovation has substantially changed and accelerated since the start of the pandemic. Customer needs and service processes have undergone dramatic disruption, which is still ongoing. A common thread throughout all the papers was the concept of the ecosystem thinking, which was discussed from a wide field of perspectives and in a comprehensive way. In line with the concept of the Service-Dominant Logic, the needs of the different actors in the ecosystem need to be identified and integrated into the design of the services and the integration of the various resources in the ecosystem. The ecosystem perspective not only integrates the different human actors, but also technological, digital resources.

Innovation through intensive collaboration allows to switch different perspectives and innovation approaches. This results in seamless value propositions and solutions for the beneficiary actors, which is a necessary prerequisite for economic value creation. Well-designed service experiences based on a consequentially customer-centric view and approach are thus at the basis of value creation.

This transition to digital service innovation in ecosystems requires not only fundamental changes of the technological platforms. In particular, collaboration across actors, organizations, and industry requires a new level of trust, culture, skills, marketing approaches and innovation frameworks.

Many thanks to all those who spoke at, and attended, the Smart Service Summit. A big thinks to IBM, data innovation alliance, ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts for supporting the event.

Service Lunch: „Essen, Lernen, Netzwerken“

Organized by the Smart Services Expert Group.

10X-Service Design Lab
An accelerator for business development

Automotive industry is going through a digital transformation and striving to expand its business models into new mobility solutions. Their core product-driven business is expanding to service-orientated business models which requires a new set of expertise and capabilities. In his talk, Linus examines the possibilities to use service design in business development for human-centered accelerated decision-making by application of digital co-creation.

Please register at: https://ch.xing-events.com/10X-ServiceDesignLab
Online by Microsoft Teams, Participants get an access link after registration.
You can also find all relevant information in the flyer!

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