Title: The impact of producer services on manufacturing value chain

Authors: Chun Li Yang, Ming Yu

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Shunde #529, Beijing 100084, PR China. ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Shunde #505, Beijing 100084, PR China

Abstract: With more and more producer services appearing in manufacturing activities, producer services gradually become indispensably value-adding nodes in manufacturing value chain. Due to the fast development of Information Technology (IT) and the accelerated division of labour and specialisation, producer services incrementally impact the activities themselves and make new configurations of the traditional manufacturing value chain, which makes manufacturing firms gain competitive advantages through cost advantages and differentiation. Moreover, manufacturing firms recombine with producer services into a value network or value system based on the new business commerce and IT. Compared with the traditional manufacturing value chain, the constituents and structure of the value network or value system changed greatly. Therefore, it is necessary to analyse the constituent elements of the value network, which is the basis for further optimising the manufacturing value chain. In this paper, we focus on analysing producer services, their relationships with the manufacturing industry and their effects on the manufacturing value chain.

Keywords: value chain; producer services; manufacturing industry; value networks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOI.2007.015645

International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics, 2007 Vol.2 No.4, pp.421 - 438

Published online: 06 Nov 2007 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article