Managing uncertainty in service production with mobile systems - Case waste management company

Today’s growth of the service sector as a whole has created demand for more efficient service production. Many services require interaction between customers and service personnel, whereas some can be automated into self-services. In this study, we focus on services, that are neither purely human facilitated, nor purely automated, and contain uncertainty in the production process. Based on resource centric theories of strategy and research on uncertainties in service production, we introduce a research framework to evaluate efficient solutions for service production. Our research framework looks at environmental and informational uncertainties, and how an organization can adapt to these by utilizing technology or skilled labour. Illustrated with a case company, we show how mobile information systems can be used to manage service production related uncertainties, which are also typically barriers to standardization. The case study demonstrates how informational uncertainty could be more easily controlled using the new system. The job satisfaction of the workers was increased and their turnover and training time was decreased. Additionally, customer complaints were reduced and invoicing became more efficient. These enabled the company to enhance the efficiency of the service production processes further, moving closer to standardizing and automating the service production process within an uncertain environment.