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The aim of this study is to gain important insights on integration oriented servitization identifying essential dimensions of effective structures, coordination approaches and management controls adopted by manufacturing firms that integrate forward towards distribution, sales and services.

The study adopts a theory-guided qualitative abductive methodology to conduct a comparative case-study of two manufacturing firms in the same industry integrating forward to enhance servitization but with significantly different performance outcomes. The findings are uncovered from a broad spectrum of primary and secondary data spanning two decades.

The consistently high-performing firm puts equal emphasis on production and downstream distribution, sales and services and motivate individuals to engage in entrepreneurial efforts to develop combined product-services offerings that are valued by customers. The underperforming firm prioritizes operating efficiency driven by engineering prowess and managed through planning, standardization, authority and central controls.

The study is based on two representative firms operating in a specific industry context, which has ramifications for the generalizability of results and calls for replication studies to substantiate and extend findings.

Forward integration from manufacturing into distribution, sales and services represents a specific servitization strategy that needs structure and particular coordination approaches to be effective in complex dynamic product-markets. The characteristics of the outperforming case company provide useful insights on effective integrated servitization efforts.

Forward integration is a commonly adopted strategy among manufacturing firms that constitute the backbone of modern economies and effective governance of these integration oriented servitization efforts has important implications for societal value creation.

This study builds on rationales from management science including economic theory, corporate strategy and different micro-foundational lenses and thereby hone recent calls for broader theoretical foundations to enlighten studies of the servitization puzzle.

The purpose of this paper is to assess and benchmark Six Sigma strategies in services sector, namely, the telecom field, by establishing tables of fallouts of non-conforming services and their associated costs along with a custom data envelopment model for benchmarking the different strategic alternatives.

Under normality assumption, process fallout in Six Sigma is around 0.002/3.4 part per million for a centered/shifted process. By introducing Six Sigma to applications in services sector, normality assumption may no longer be valid; hence, fallouts of non-normal attributes are computed for different one-sided quality levels. The associated costs of strategy deployment, fallout and transaction completion are all considered. Data envelopment analysis model is also established to benchmark the Six Sigma strategic plans. The strategies are detailed down to processes and to quality characteristics which constitute the decision-making units. The efficiency of each service unit is computed using both CCR and super efficiency models.

The amount of efforts/costs needed to reduce the variation in a service may differ according to the targeted quality level. For the same Six Sigma quality level, services demonstrate different performance/efficiencies and hence different returns. In some scenarios, moderate quality levels could present high efficiencies as compared to services of higher levels. It was also found that the required improvement is less in the case of Log-normal as compared to normal distributions at some quality levels. This observation is also noted across the presented distributions of this study (Normal, Log-normal, Exponential, Gamma and Weibull).

The deployment of Six Sigma in services is mostly found in time-related concepts such as timeliness of billing, lifetimes in reliability engineering, queueing theory, healthcare and telecommunication.

The paper contributes to the existing research by presenting an assessment model of Six Sigma strategies in services of non-normal distributions. Strategies of different quality levels present diverse efficiencies; hence, higher quality levels may not be the best alternatives in terms of the returns on investment. The computed fallout rates of the different distributions can serve as palm lines for further deployment of Six Sigma in services. Besides, the combination of optimization and Six Sigma analysis provides additional benchmarking tool of strategic plans in both manufacturing and services sector.

The choice of what services to provide to customers is a problem of strategic significance to most companies, yet this is a decision which is often taken in an arbitrary fashion for purely qualitative and subjective reasons. The decision made here can have serious repercussions in many areas of company operations and especially in the design and operation of the distribution system. For example, a decision to deliver to all customers within twenty‐four hours of receipt of an order can lead to a distribution system involving a large number of small, expensive depots and an underutilised delivery fleet. On the other hand an unreliable service, with many partially filled orders or frequently damaged articles for example can mean a loss of sales as customers go elsewhere.

To explain the January 6, 2016 written guidance (the “New Guidance”) issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Investment Management on payments made by mutual funds to intermediaries for distribution and non-distribution-related services.

Explains the SEC’s earlier guidance in the 1998 “Supermarket Letter,” the provisions of Rule 12b-1, the practice termed “distribution in guise,” the emphasis in the “New Guidance” on the role of a fund board’s business judgment, how Rule 12b-1 compliance fits into Rule 38a-1 compliance programs, specific fund activities and arrangements with intermediaries that are of concern to the SEC staff, and the focus of the New Guidance on an adviser’s fiduciary duty to mitigate or eliminate conflicts of interest.

The New Guidance articulates clear expectations that fund boards will have a process to evaluate the nature of intermediary payments and that fund advisers will provide boards with information in the advisers’ possession that the boards need to carry out that evaluation. Another intent of the New Guidance is apparently to give the SEC a clearer basis to bring enforcement actions concerning the use of fund assets to pay intermediaries for distribution-related activities.

Practical guidance from experienced investment management lawyers.

This research examined the survey responses of 801 financial customers who provided information regarding their usage of, and attitudes towards, financial distribution channels. The study found that there were distinctive segments within the financial market that had significantly different levels of usage of financial distribution channels. Financial customers were asked to indicate their orientation towards convenience, service, technology, computers, change, knowledge about methods of accessing money, and confidence in using electronic banking. Financial customers’ usage of human tellers, automated teller machines, electronic funds transfer at the point of sale, credit cards, cheques, Internet banking and telephone banking was investigated, and this information was used to determine if relationships exist between customer orientations and the usage of financial distribution channels. Further results and implications of the study for financial services are addressed.

“The customer service complaint is universal in physical distribution operations. It is inevitable that even the most efficient of distribution systems will occasionally have failures; it is equally inevitable that from these failures will emanate complaints. Only if an active and systematic effort is made to handle these complaints can they graduate … to become part of management's kit of tools in making its distribution system better and more responsive to the company's (and Its customers') needs.”

Developments in UK grocery distribution are reviewed; namely centralised networks, composite networks and the increasing use of third party contract distributors. Issues likely to affect the future development of physical distribution are also discussed, such as the quality of operations, customer service improvements through utilisation of information technology, the “greening” demands likely to be encountered and the opportunity for UK distribution companies to expand their services throughout Europe. The major conclusions are found to be that UK grocery distribution is highly developed; centralised, composite systems are in place either operated in‐house by the user or contracted out to third party distribution companies. Quality, service and greening issues are likely to become the tools operators will use to gain competitive advantage in this highly competitive marketplace both in the UK and throughout Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a retail distribution network can be rationalised from a spatial perspective to improve service responsiveness and delivery efficiency.

This paper applies spatial analytics to examine variability of demand, both spatially and from a service delivery perspective, for an auto-parts retail network. Spatial analytics are applied to map the location of stores and customers to represent demand and service delivery patterns and to delineate market areas.

Results show significant spatial clustering in customer demand; whilst the delivery of products to customers, in contrast, is spatially dispersed. There is a substantial gap between revenue generated and costs. Market area analysis shows significant overlap, whereby stores compete with each other for business. In total, 80 per cent of customers can be reached within a 15-minute-radius, whilst only 20 per cent lies outside the market areas. Segmentation analysis of customers, based on service delivery, also shows the prevalence of the Pareto principle or 80:20 rule whereby 80 per cent of the revenue is generated by 20 per cent of customers.

Spatially integrated strategies are suggested to improve the efficiency of the retail network. It is recommended that less accessible and unprofitable customers could be either charged extra delivery cost or outsourced without the risk of a substantial reduction in revenue or quality of service delivery.

Innovative application of spatial analytics is used to analyse and visualise unit-record sales data to generate practical solutions to improve retail network responsiveness and operational efficiency.

Logistics has always been a central and essential feature of all economic activity and yet paradoxically it is only in recent years that it has come to receive serious attention from either the business or academic world. One very obvious reason for this neglect is that, whilst the functions that comprise the logistics task are individually recognised, the concept of logistics as an integrative activity in business has only really developed within the last 20 years.

The article reports the findings of research carried out by the authors into dedicated contract distribution (DCD), a service which is “tailor‐made” to the requirements of users. Major characteristics of the DCD marketplace in the UK are identified and future prospects for growth are commented on, particularly outside the UK. As freight deregulation is recognised as a prerequisite for the development of specialist services such as DCD, development potential seems particularly promising in both the US and parts of mainland Europe.