SMART SERVICES AND THEIR BENEFITS FOR MANUFACTURERS FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE.

Current manufacturers do not provide only tangible products to their customers, but also deliver services and integrated solutions in today's globalized environment. Furthermore, they effort also on implementing 'smart services'. Smart services allow by connected productservice systems to exchange data between their customers and the service providers. Smart services offer many benefits for both manufacturing companies as service providers and as well as for their customers. The aim of this paper is to investigate which benefits of smart services are the most significant for manufacturing companies. To address the research objective, a qualitative multi-case study was conducted among seven Czech electrotechnical SMEs, which have already started with smart service provision. The respondents operate in the same industry, but they provide a wide range of products and services to their customers with varying degrees of smart service orientation. The empirical part of the paper involves in-depth interviews with owners or with experienced senior managers in each case organization. The interviews were done from April 2017 to January 2018. The findings show the most important benefits for small and medium manufacturers and their customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]