SERVICE SYSTEM ENGINEERING

Service Systems Engineering (SSE) mandates a disciplined and systemic approach (service oriented
customer-centric) among different stakeholders and resources in the design and delivery of the service
to help customize and personalize service transactions to meet particular customer needs.

Service systems engineering uses disciplined approaches to minimize risk by coordinating/orchestrating

social aspects, governance (including security), environmental, human behavior, business, customer
care, service management, operations, and technology development processes. It extends the holistic
view of a system to a customer-centric, end-to-end view of service system design

The Systems Engineer Responsibilities include: Managing and monitoring all installed systems and
infrastructure. Installing, configuring, testing and maintaining operating systems, application software
and system management tools.

Engineering approach helps to better understand and manage conflict, there by helping both private
and public organizations optimize their strategic decision making. The use of a systemic approach
reduces rework, overall time to market, and total cost of development.

Service system can be viewed as a system of systems (SoS), where individual, heterogeneous, functional
systems are linked together to realize new features/functionalities of a meta-system and to improve
robustness, lower cost, and increase reliability.

Spohrer (2011) proposed to categorize different service sectors into three types of Service Systems:

Systems that focus on flow of things: transportation and supply chain, water and waste recycling, food
and products, energy and electric Grid, information/ICT & cloud.

Systems that focus on Human Activities and Development: buildings and construction, retail and
hospitality / media and entertainment, banking and finance / business consulting, healthcare and family
life, education and work life / jobs and entrepreneurship.

Systems that focus on Governing: city, state, nation.

What is the role of Systems Engineer?

Systems Engineer Responsibilities include: Managing and monitoring all installed systems and
infrastructure. Installing, configuring, testing and maintaining operating systems, application software
and system management tools.
SKILL SETS FOR SERVICE SYSTEMS PROFESSIONALS

Key skills for building services engineers:

1.Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills- A service engineer must able to think critically to
solvevarious problems in a specific task.
2. An eye for detail and good design - A service engineer must be creative and can createunique designs
that can attract others attention.
3. Excellent numeracy skills - One must be excellent when it comes with numbers. An engineer is known
for being exposed to numbers.
4.Strong communication skills - An engineer must not only limit on solving problems but also needed to
have great vocabulary in order tocommunicate to others cause by communicating ideas that are
gathered and generalized to solve problems.
5. Excellent people and time management skills - An engineer must be also disciplined. Knows how to
deal with problems and knows proper way of doing. follows the rules and time.
6. The ability to work well both as part of a team and on your own - a good engineer must learn how to
act to problems by themselves and also learn how to interact with others.
7. Strong technical drawing skills - An engineer must not only known for their analytical skills and
solving skills but also engineers must be creative and experts when it comes to their drawing skills.

ROLES OF TECHNOLOGISTS VERSUS MANAGERS/LEADERS

TECHNOLOGISTS
Engineering Technologist – analyzes and modifies new and existing engineering technology and applies
them in the testing and implementation of engineering projects.
KINDS OF TECHNOLOGISTS
Civil Engineering Technologist – applies and modifies established engineering practices such as the
design and implementation of civil engineering projects.
Electrical and Electronic Technologist – works in the designing, manufacturing, installation,
commissioning, operation and maintenance of electrical and electronic plants and equipments.
Mechanical Technologist – applies and improves the design and implementation of mechanical
engineering projects including technology, systems and procedures.
MANAGERS
Engineering Service Managers/Leaders – manages all the aspects of Services group which includes,
coordination of activities, improvement, determining staffing requirements, mentoring employees, and
evaluating operational effectiveness.
PREPARATION OF SERVICE SYSTEMS ENGINEERS/LEADERS

Leaderships - Must be a key element advancing for engineers profession to remain

relevant and connected in an era of heightened outsourcing and global competition
Customer Focus - Determine how Services System Engineering/leaders should prepare
themselves is to first understand what is services enterprises aims to accomplish.
Enterprise services is an over-arching term to describe an architecture combining
engineering discipline and computer science to solve practical business problems.
THREE – DECKER LEADERSHIP BUILDING ARCHETICTURE
3 Parts namely:
1. The Function of Engineering management( Planning, Organize, leading and controlling).
2. Business fundamentals for services system engineers and leaders( cost accounting and
analysis, financial accounting and analysis marketing management.)
3. Service System Management Engineering leadership in the New millenium( System
Engineering as managers and leaders, Ethics, knowledge Innovation in Services,
Organizational Excellence, globalization and appendix, which contains thirty- plus
business cases addressing SSME issues og relevance).

CHALLENGES IN THE NEW MILLENIUM

Service systems engineers/leaders need to prepare themselves for this future by being
capable of eight functions:
1. Thinking globally, acting locally.
2. Recognizing new local opportunities and mobilizing the required corporate and the other
resources effectively.
3. Engaging in open innovation to foster the creation of strategic differentiation.
4. Creating business partnerships and alliances on a global scale.
5. Managing global terms of members with diverse backgrounds to pursue organizational
objectives.
6. Resolving conflicts of planning, organizational, and personal types.
7. Implementing local and emerging technologies to add value.
8. Investing master location-specific business factor(culture, language, business
methodologies, governmental regulations, personal network, etc.
 MOST COMMON REASONS FOR CAREER FAILURES
1. Poor Interpersonal Skills – Single best reason for career failure. One needs to be sensitive to the
feelings of others, able to listen and understand the communication, strive to build team support,
and emotionally stable.
2. Wrong Fit – From time to time, a person may find it hard to adapt one’s abilities, styles,
personalities and values to the culture and business practices of the workplace.
3. Unable to take risks – It is a major stumbling block to the advancement of one’s career. Because
of Fear of Failure, some engineers stays in their position for too long and not accepting promotions
to venture out for new positions outside the company.
4. Bad Luck – Career disruptions due to bad luck can happen to anyone, one should be able to
recover quickly that consistently produced value to costumers, and such value-creation in the
company.

5 Self-destructive behavior – Examples are working in secret, resistance to change, excessively

aggressive, uncooperative attitude, picking fights with people, overly argumentative and etc. It is clearly
unwanted in any group environment and should be avoided.

6. Lack of Focus – Getting busy thinking to everything that is not included in your work. Failing to focus is
detrimental to one’s own career.

7. Workplace Biases – Under ideal conditions, all workplaces should be free of biases with respect to
race, gender, age, national region, religious belief and other individual qualities.

HOW TO MANAGE ONE’S SUPERIOR

UNWRITTEN RULES
1. No one is perfect - The appointee is no exception.
2. The Superior’s strengths are valued more than the weaknesses - The organization counts on him or
her to lead the group and add value, Unless the Superior clearly violates the stated rules.
3. Organization Trusts the Views and Desires of The Superior - over those of his or her subordinates.

MUST HAVE HABITS

1. Understand the business and personal pressure the superior is under - His or her values and
motivators, work style, and personal style.
2. Expect modest help and request it only when you really need it - It is better to get help from your own
networked coworkers and friends.
3.Be Sensitive To The Superior’s Work Habits - Learn his or her preferred mode of communications—
face to face, phone, e-mails, or staff meetings, for instance.
4. Stay in touch with the superior - unless he or she does not want to be bothered regularly.
5. Present Materials Clearly – without complex details and jargon.
6. Do Not Defend A Cause Unless It Deserves It - Do not complain when you do not get all that you asked
for.
7. Exercise self-control- Manage your own overreactions or counterproductive behavior.
PLANNING AS ONE OF THE FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT
IMPORTANCE OF PLANNING

The importance of planning as the major constituent in the management process is universally accepted.
Planning not only brings stability and certainty to business, it also brings in a unified sense of direction
and purpose for the achievement of certain well-defined objectives.

Sense of Direction − Planning provides a unity of purpose. It brings together all resources towards
achieving common goals. Without plans and goals, organizations will respond to everyday events in an
ad-hoc manner without considering long-term possibilities.

Resource Paucity − Resource crunch is a major challenge for organizations today. Managements are
confronted with the task of optimizing outputs with limited human, material, and financial resources
through intelligent planning; otherwise, wasteful inefficiencies would lead to higher prices and severe
shortages.

Uncertainty − Uncertainty is a major challenge even to the most intelligent planner. Organizations
continually face micro and macro-economic uncertainty in the course of accomplishing their tasks.
Planning helps managers anticipate such changes and meet these challenges.

TYPES OF PLANNING
Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities,

focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are
working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and
adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment.

Operational Planning

Operational Plan DOES present highly detailed information specifically to direct people
to perform the day-to-day tasks required in the running the organization. Organization management and
staff should frequently refer to the operational plan in carrying out their everyday work.

TOOLS FOR PLANNING

-Market Research

-SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) Analysis

-Financial What-If Analysis and Modeling

-Scenario Planning

-Performance Benchmarks

-Product Life-Cycle Analysis

 ORGANIZING AS ONE OF THE FUNCTIONS OF
MANAGEMENT
Organizing is a vital part of ensuring the company can function effectively and it concerns
the day-to-day activities. The function is vital because it ensures there is structure to the
operations. You are aware of the resources and you ensure they are used in a manner that
best helps the company to achieve its targets.

How to organize?
When done efficiently, organizing tends to follow the pattern and steps outlined below:

 Identify activities and classify them – The step is straightforward enough because you
already have a plan. Your objective is to identify the different roles, processes, and activities
required to achieve the objectives. These would be the roles for the team members, the
different tasks each role would need to perform and the specific processes the tasks would
include.

 Assign the duties and resources–Once you’ve identified the above, you would begin
organizing the resources. You would assign the specific tasks for the persons you feel are
the most qualified and provide the resources to the processes, which most need them.

 Delegate authority and create responsibilities–Managers shouldn’t behave like dictators.

Although the power is concentrated to your as the manager, it doesn’t mean you should
have all the authority. In order the get the marketing campaign working properly, you might
want to ensure the person in charge of the team has the authority to make decisions. You
need devolution of responsibility, as it can ensure the plan works efficiently.

 Co-ordinate authority and responsibilities–As well as delegating authority, you also need
to co-ordinate it to match the overall functionality of the organization and the structure of the
objectives. For example, you might want two people to share the responsibility of organizing
the price reductions, with each having the ability to respond to supplier queries.
Furthermore, if you have other managers above you, it’s important to co-ordinate the
authority to ensure the functionality doesn’t suffer as a result of different plans.