This book intends to cover key issues on service strategy, planning, design, and delivery. The book is divided into six parts. The first part provides an introduction to the context of services and discusses the issues and complexities involved in managing services. The second part deals with the design of services. This includes issues specific to service capacity management, service project management and service supply chain management. The third part will help the readers to understand various issues in service resource planning. Typically, this includes Demand Forecasting, Aggregate Planning, Service Scheduling, Service Inventory Management. Subsequently, part four covers the issues specific to service improvement. This will include service quality and six Sigma, service productivity and performance and managing people in service organizations. Part five deals with IT and Analytics in service management. This section deliberates upon IT and service management and various analytical models useful in managing services. Finally, part six includes five cases in detail for extensive and critical class discussion.
Dr Jitesh J. Thakkar is Dean (Academics) and Professor (School of Management) at Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya (GSV), Central University, Vadodara, India. Dr Thakkar was a faculty at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India, and has more than 25 years of professional experience.He has been invited as a faculty expert by IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Kozhikode, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, NITIE Mumbai, NIT Surat, NIT Trichy, NIT Calicut, IRMA, AMA, BCCI Kolkata, L&T-IPM. He holds a PhD in Supply Chain Management from IIT Delhi, India, an MTech in Industrial Engineering from IIT Delhi, and a Bachelors of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering conferred with a Gold Medal from one of the oldest Government Engineering Colleges, Birla Vishvakarma Mahavidyalaya Engineering College, Sardar Patel University, India. His areas of interests include Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Transportation Management, Project Management, Rail Operations, Safety and Sustainability, Service Operations Management, Lean Six Sigma, Design Thinking, Optimization and Statistical Modelling, and System Dynamics.
