Towards a Functional Reference Model for Service Planning and Execution in the Heavy Equipment Manufacturing Industry

Heavy equipment manufacturing (HEM) firms are increasingly challenged by the integration of service planning and execution in their established product-centred information systems (IS) environment. Being confronted with the strategic challenge of reducing operating costs and being forced to meet the ever increasing industrial service demands, these firms have more and more problems to find the appropriate IS solution. Moreover, service functionality needs to be clearly defined and demarcated in the existing enterprise application landscape. Despite a few standardization efforts, there is no common understanding of the IS appropriation for service management in HEM companies and clear functional design. We address this need by developing a functional reference model. The design of the model is grounded in standardization literature, focus group and case study research involving eleven HEM and two software companies.