Search results

This paper investigates the main trends and uncertainties that will define fourth generation mobile systems and services (4G) in Europe. It outlines two divergent visions on 4G: the so‐called “immediate” 4G vision, consisting of wireless local area networks (WLANs) combined with other wireless access technologies, competing with 3G in the short term, and the so‐called “linear” 4G vision, in which the 3G standard is not replaced until the end of its life cycle by an ultra‐high speed broadband wireless network. Which of these visions will materialise, and what this means for the competitiveness of the main 4G stakeholders in Europe, will be to a large extent determined by which business models are feasible for 4G.

The automotive industry has been studied extensively, but few studies focus on outbound logistics in automotive supply chains, or on the logistics service provider’s (LSP’s) point of view. Furthermore, there is hardly any research on service model innovation in LSPs. The purpose of this paper is to narrow these research gaps.

The analysis is based on a single-case study – an LSP that specializes in services for the automotive industry. The paper examines the company’s service models and their development over time.

The findings show how the case company has moved towards multifaceted service models through a number of radical and incremental innovations. Moreover, it has used the same methods in developing all its new service models, and has applied modularity principles in service innovation to achieve better process efficiency and service effectiveness.

The rather narrow focus of this study – automotive logistics in a specific area – decreases the generalizability of the findings beyond this context. However, the single-case approach offers in-depth insights, and the analytical frameworks developed herein for service models is applicable in other contexts.

The analysis may help LSPs and service companies in their service design and development. The use of modularity principles makes it easier to offer mass-customized services and to develop efficient processes.

This study narrows a research gap in examining outbound logistics services in the automotive supply chain and focussing on the LSP’s perspective.

In e-government domain, an efficient semantic interoperability of services is a big challenge. In this context, semantic technologies play a fundamental role in numerous e-government programs. Indeed, these technologies enable enriching the public service description provided by different public administrations with additional semantic information, which allows automatic services processing and information exchange between involved members in comprehensive and interpretable manner, thus facilitating service integration and cooperation. The most frequently used technologies in this area are semantic web services (SWS) technology and ontology. Thus, for modelling efficiently public services, the authors have exploring, studying and analyzing some of e-government researches and projects that applied semantic technologies.

In this paper, the authors address how semantic technologies transform the e-government domain through exploring and studying the use of SWS and ontology in numerous researches and projects applying these technologies in this area. Then, the authors have compared them through a set of criteria defined according to e-government requirements such as the SWS modelling approach for describing semantically public services, ontologies for representing governmental specific features (e.g. regulation and organizational structures) and developed portal for supporting user ' s perspectives. Based on this study, the authors have identified the appropriate standards, frameworks, and models for developing the framework.

The authors have developed a framework for public services which enhances existing approaches with additional aspects. Thus, the approach comparing to other works improves the service ontology with a cognitive semantic approach to support the multiple usage contexts and situations of services. This semantic is developed in form of a Sit/Ctx ontology developed based on CSs model represented through conceptual graphs theory. The authors have used this model besides OWL-S, improving thus the level of automation of discovery and composition process of public services, which become more efficient with taken into consideration their interrelations and situations.

The approach comparing to other works improves the service ontology with a cognitive semantic approach to support the multiple usage contexts and situations of public services, providing thus the end-users (people and enterprises) a better orientation in discovery process.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new model – namely service quality enhancement – in the electricity utility sector of south India and to test this model's fitness.

Effective customer satisfaction investigation is a very important precondition for a power supply enterprise to win in the market competition. The problems that need to be solved for the power supply enterprise are how to use advanced and practiced methods to evaluate electricity customer satisfaction, and how to use results of the evaluation to improve their service. Planning and operating modern electric power systems involves several interlinked and complex tasks. In this paper, structural equation modeling (SEM) is applied to the electricity utility service model to verify service quality satisfaction. To determine the scope of the electricity industry and its relationship with overall service quality, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted and a standard questionnaire was designed for all customers in different groups of stakeholders (i.e. domestic, industrial, agricultural, public organization). To investigate the respondents’ perceptions regarding the service quality of the electricity utility industry, 200 questionnaires were sent, and from these 169 responses were collected, consisting of 53 responses from the domestic sector, 43 industrial, 30 agricultural, and the remaining 43 from public organization consumers. Then a model was constructed using SEM and tested by Amos 18 to verify the casual relationship between the measured dimensions and the electricity service quality.

The results indicate that electricity service has a direct relationship with the dimensions of reliability, tangibility, empathy responsiveness, assurance, security and stability.

In this era electricity is the vital need, but due to regular interruptions in the electricity service, customer dissatisfaction is the measured issue. At the current time, the Indian electricity utility sector enjoys a monopolistic business. Therefore, there is hardly any effort to improve the service quality in this sector due to a lack of administrative pressure and reformation measures. Indian electricity consumers face many quality-related problems as far as the distribution of electricity is concerned. In order to assess service quality in electricity distribution, a survey has been conducted in this work to extract quality constructs from a customer's perspective. One of the contributions of this work is that on the basis of results obtained from factor analysis of the survey data, an instrument has been proposed for the first time in the Indian context, consisting of seven dimensions (reliability, tangibility, empathy, responsiveness, assurance, security and stability). This instrument would help to measure the service quality of the Indian electricity utility sectors, and it provides insights for managers and administrators to set a service standard to fill the service gap. SEM is a tool is used for confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis. It is used to test and validate standard instruments. Through confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis using SEM, the proposed service quality model has been tested and validated for practical acceptance in Indian electricity industry.

Many features constitute an adaptive system such as user model, interface specification, business functionalities and service implementation. Context awareness is an important facet of service oriented application creation dealing with the gathering, use and representation of context information. Generally, user interfaces and services communities work separately on the adaptation process and do not converge. The aim of this work is to manage the system’s functionalities and the user interface that delivers data to the relevant consumer early since the design phase until the code generation.

The authors discuss how a unified method based on a model-driven architecture for adaptive user interface and pervasive service creation eases the work of designers and developers, limits incompatibility issues and supports dynamic generation of systems adapted to different contexts of use.

The proposed approach is able to support a semi-automatic ubiquitous application generation with service, behavior, presentation and content adaptation.

In this paper, the authors tackle context-awareness at two levels: system functionalities and user interface generation. The authors also tackle adaptation at the specification and implementation levels.

This work aims to combine the perspectives of logistics‐service providers (LSPs) and small and medium‐sized enterprises (SME) in the development of value‐added logistics services. The purpose was to create a theory‐based and initially tested framework that could help both service providers and SMEs identify new opportunities for developing their logistics.

The research followed design‐science methodology and was carried out via semi‐structured interviews within the case company (a large Finnish LSP), its customers, and experts from the area of logistics services. Data on companies offering value‐added logistics services were also used in the research. The focus of the research was on advanced value‐added logistics services.

The paper presents a framework for categorizing logistics services for SMEs and proposes new logistics‐service models for SME customers. Altogether, three service models are proposed to bridge the gap between LSP and SME customers. In particular, the consulting‐oriented approach seemed to be appropriate for the SMEs. The other two models, 3PL with planning and Outsourced Chief Logistics Officer, require more effort from both parties.

The paper presents a theoretical framework for categorizing logistics services and discusses the strategic options for an LSP to expand its service portfolio. However, further empirical research related to logistics‐service design is needed to develop the framework further and to improve its external validity.

This work offers insights that support LSPs to develop their service offerings to better match the needs of SMEs, and also allow managers of SMEs to better utilize the available LSP competence and services.

The existing research in the area of value‐added logistics services has mainly focused on either the customer perspective or the service‐provider perspective. The dyad combining these perspectives has been largely neglected. Furthermore, studies in this area have been on large enterprises as opposed to SMEs. This work fills this gap by designing value‐added logistics‐service models that combine SME needs with LSP capabilities.

The purpose of this study is to explore the literature of healthcare service quality for identifying and analyzing the healthcare service quality models and dimensions and to present future research insights pertaining to the applications of these models and dimensions.

A literature review of healthcare service quality has been performed on 59 relevant studies after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. Google Scholar and Scopus are the primary sources to find the relevant documents. Search was limited to keywords of “service quality,” “healthcare,” “models” and “dimensions.”

The results revealed that different models and dimensions have been evolved and developed after SERVQUAL in healthcare service quality literature. There is still a need to develop new models, add new contextual dimensions and items in existing models on different aspects of healthcare services. There is also a need to incorporate the perspective of service providers as respondents. Moreover, healthcare service quality models can be devolved or narrowed down at department and individual levels.

This study presents valuable research insights for the researchers and practitioners in ways that healthcare service quality models and dimensions can be developed, modified and tested further in different research contexts and settings. Besides, the literature on healthcare services can be enhanced and enriched.

Assessing airport service performance requires understanding of all passenger processing and discretionary activities at airport passenger terminals – a need that has not yet been addressed in the research to date. This paper aims to address this shortcoming in evaluating overall airport service based on passenger experience from departure to arrival.

Comparative analysis over 40 airport models, including their indicators and configuration of service measures, was undertaken in a previous work to identify key-design requirements in assessing airport service performance based on passenger experience (Wiredja et al., 2015). Based on these requirements, this paper constitutes the development of a passenger-centred model covering all service areas from departure to arrival terminals. The newly developed model is then examined using factor and regression analyses by involving 215 airline passengers from 22 world’s international airports.

Overall service performance is understood as a function of combined sub-performances of two groups of airport domains: processing domains and non-processing domains. The overall result demonstrated that the two sets of service factors and their relevant attributes had significant impact on overall service performance at processing and non-processing domains.

The proposed model applies a set of dynamic performance measures that provide flexibility. These measures are adjustable depending on the needs. Adding or replacing measures defines the specificity of the domains and performances assessed. The model components can be modified in respective service attributes when passenger needs or priorities change. The only constant component is user-centred indicators (in this research, Passenger-centred indicators).

This research has generated new insights and knowledge that directly contribute to the assessment of airport service performance. The novelty of this research is the development of a passenger-centred approach in evaluating overall airport service based on passenger experience. This passenger-driven model provides a more integrated and robust approach in this field than previously available.

The previous generations of implemented B2B e‐commerce hub solutions (e‐Marketplaces) did not successfully fulfil the requirements of buyers and suppliers (“Participants”) in different business domains to carry out their daily business and online commercial transactions with one another because of their inappropriateness, and lack of flexibility. The limitations of these provided solutions came from a lot of architectural and technological challenges in the provided technical architectures that were used to build these solutions. This research aims to provide a proposed architecture to build integrated B2B e‐Commerce hub solutions. It also aims to make use of bottom‐up/top‐down approaches to building an integrated solution and to resolve the reasons for the failure of previous generations of B2B e‐commerce hubs.

The research uses the EDI reference model, which is provided by the ISO organization to survey and analyze the challenges of previous generations of B2B e‐Commerce hubs solutions and their architectures. The study develops a proposed solution architecture based on the recent approaches to building IOSs to build a B2B e‐commerce hub solution architecture that can be used to implement vertical B2B e‐commerce hubs (vertical e‐Marketplaces). The paper assesses the capabilities of the proposed solution architecture for building vertical B2B e‐Marketplaces by applying the proposed architecture to the building of a vertical B2B e‐Marketplace for the oil and gas sector in Egypt.

Previous B2B e‐Commerce hub initiatives failed to extend their products and services to their “Participants”, and required substantial investment and effort from each “Participant” to join such a B2B e‐Commerce hub. The failure of these IOS projects lies in their inability to integrate B2B e‐Commerce networks based on IOS and consequently, they supported very few partners and “Participants”. These IOS approaches did not resolve the existing challenges of B2B e‐Commerce hubs, especially in the realm of interoperability.

The main contribution of the proposed architecture comes from the creation of a clear automatic path between a business requirements layer and a technology layer by combining both Service Oriented Architecture and management requirements in a single framework to provide dynamic products and flexible services. It provides a complete Multi Channel Framework to resolve the interoperability challenges.

Agent-based computer simulation gives new possibilities to model service supply chains which combine flow of people, geographical elements, demand patterns and service rates. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate by using an example how agent-based modeling can be used for health service supply chain design.

Generic structure of agent-based service supply chain modeling is described. The presented example is healthcare supply chain with service distribution and service location problem. Main focus in presentation on model building, actual case data are not discussed.

In context of service supply chain, agent-based modeling has advantages compared to traditional discrete event approach. Agent-based simulation allows modeling of interactions of autonomous agents.

Reach of service for each geographical area may be used as a constraint for building service distribution network. Service supply chains consist of service providers and flow of customers with given geographical locations. Key performance indicators can be assessed in combination with service footprint.

Availability of geographical population data and agent-based simulation gives new possibility for service supply chain models.