Integration of automotive service and technology strategies

Automotive after sales service is a highly profitable business. Nevertheless, service providers have to deal with an increasing range of variants of products and technologies, shorter life cycles and changing customer demands. In spite of these manifold challenges, after sales departments are often not involved in the early product development stage, nor are customer demands and technical parameters fully considered in the service development processes. Therefore, an integration of service and technology strategies is necessary. This paper presents a framework for this integration that visualises the complex interdependencies and interfaces between service as well as product and car workshop technologies.