The Class

Service firms employ over 75 percent of the workforce.  Yet managing service operations is often very different from managing manufacturing or distribution operations.  Relatively little operations literature, particularly that involving mathematical models, focuses on services outside of the traditional area of queuing management.  However, there is a plethora of opinion in the area as well as a great number of empirical studies. Hence, while we will emphasize mathematical service models, we will also examine these other streams of literature to identify opportunities for further service operations management research.

In this course we will study the academic literature that deals with conceptual, empirical, and mathematical models of issues in service management.  In particular we will be concerned with models that capture the psychological and/or marketing as well as efficiency dimensions along the service-profit chain.  Readings on the following topics will be included:

• Service typologies and the nature of services
• Service quality, including the psychology of waiting lines and the service encounter
• Productivity in services, including data envelopment analysis
• Yield (or revenue) management
• Service supply chains
• Technology and lean services
• New service design

This course is designed primarily for doctoral students who are interested in doing research in operations management.  Although it may also be of interest to other graduate students in management or engineering, it is expected that all students have a sufficient grounding in stochastic processes, math programming, and micro-economics to be able to read and understand the academic literature from journals such as Management Science, Operations Research, and The Journal of Marketing. 

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Last Modiflied: August 27, 2003