The March 2012 paper on 'The Impact of Contract Type on Service Provider Information Requirements' by Rachel Cuthbert, Duncan McFarlane and Andy Neely

This paper explores the role of information in the servitization of manufacturing. Companies are moving from discrete provision of equipment and spare parts to long-term service contracts, which depend on a very high level of availability and quality of information throughout the service life cycle. This work focuses on whether, for a proposed contract based around complex equipment, the information system is capable of providing information at an acceptable quality and requires the Information Requirement to be examined in a formal manner. A service information framework was applied to methodically assess Information Requirements for diff erent contract types to understand the information gap between them. Results from case examples indicate that this gap includes information required for the diff erent contract types and a set of contract-specifi c Information Requirements. Furthermore, the control, ownership and use of information diff er across contract types as the boundary of operation and responsibility changes. 

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