Identifying uncertainties for industrial service delivery: a systems approach

Abstract

Service delivery by industrial firms is increasingly seen as an influential factor for sustained profits. Across industry, this is typically achieved through long term contracts that aim to achieve performance, results, solutions, and so on. However, the increasing shift towards a service-oriented approach for production has created a number of challenges that originate from uncertainties that are experienced across supply networks.Along these lines, this research adopts a soft systems based approach to identify and categorise the uncertainties that are experienced particularly at the bidding stage of service contracts. These uncertainties significantly affect the cost and performance of service-oriented projects. This article presents the findings of a 3-year study with 22 aerospace experts from naval and defence industries that acted as key informants. It seeks to contribute to knowledge in research and industry by identifying and categorising uncertainties for industrial service delivery. Using the findings of the study, the article concludes by discussing implications and future challenges for academe and practice.

Conceptualising uncertainty in safety-critical projects: A practitioner perspective

“…• Relationships between actors and stakeholders as a source of uncertainty (Aaltonen, 2011;Jensen et al, 2006;Kolltveit and Gronhaug, 2004;Thomas and Mengel, 2008) • Importance of the early phase in managing uncertainty (Atkinson et al, 2006;Erkoyuncu et al, 2013;Kolltveit and Gronhaug, 2004;Samset, 2009) challenge of identifying the key factors that influence it. However, the few tentative conclusions that can be drawn from this school are that soft skills such as competence, team spirit and communications can influence how successful project managers are in managing uncertainty (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997;Hong et al, 2004;Olsson, 2007).…”

Uncertainty quantification metrics for whole product life cycle cost estimates in aerospace innovation

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Long Tail Uncertainty Distributions in Novel Risk Probability Classification

“…Advanced aerospace products and services are best understood as industrial product-service systems within immature contexts [1], systems of systems [2] or complex adaptive system [3]. They exist in complex domain spaces with a tendency to drift to chaotic ones whereby future cost uncertainty will typically increase the more complex or novel the product and service is [4].…”