Information Management Trends in After Sales Service The use of information in planning and execution in supply chain management

is considered an enabler of better performance in supply chains. Jacobs et al. (2007) and Benton and Shin (1998) record the developments in the IT industry from MRP to MRP II and ERP systems and how these developments coincide with advances in supply chain management. Similarly in after sales service, Porter and Millar (1985), Slater (1996), and Wilson et al. (1999) highlight how the information can give a company the competitive advantage by enabling it to meet the customer expectations in a better way. In Figure 1.2, we depict a typical management information system to support spare parts logistics in after sales service. On the supply side, the service provider needs to collect and manage information to support supplier selection, management, and collaborative engineering. The service provider also uses significant information to support various planning tasks such as service network design, inventory replenishment, transportation and warehouse management, reverse logistics, and manpower resource planning for eld and hub locations. On the delivery side, the tasks involve service planning and service execution. In the literature, various researchers discuss the use of product, process and customer information to support various after sales service operations. Pinheiro et al. (2007) discuss the analysis of intelligent databases to observe failure trends in hard disks and improve maintenance services. Similarly, Lee et al. (2006) discuss the use of product life cycle information to transform the maintenance philosophy from fail and x to predict and prevent. Blakeley et al. (2003) discuss the case of Schindler Corporation. The company developed a customized decision support system using real time data on eld service engineers in combination with a geographical information system for tactical and operational decisions in service planning and delivery. Decisions such as eld service engineer dispatching, routing and manpower planning are estimated by using the above information. A comprehensive use of product, process and customer information in after sales service is highlighted by McFarlan and Stoddard (1986). Specically, the authors discuss the case of the Otis Elevator Company, where the organization developed a decision support application called Otisline to support customer service. The initial focus of the application was to support production control, accounting, and inventory control.