Pontus Johansson

Industrial service profiling: Matching service offerings and processes

Abstract Firms using industrial goods as a resource in their own operations need support and services to maintain an efficient use of these resources. Education, spare parts and maintenance are just some examples of services required by many industrial customers. These services make up a large part of many industrial companies purchase budget, but, even more importantly, for the supplier these services often make up a substantial proportion of the companys profit. There is also a trend towards the integration of goods and services. However, there is little help available on strategies for the efficient supply or manufacture of such services. An operations strategy should not be limited to supporting just new sales if the after-sales market of industrial services has a large impact on the companys competitive advantage. A complete operations strategy should therefore be linked not only to the marketing strategy, but also to a service strategy of the company. In this paper we take the suppliers view on the task of providing industrial services; i.e. the supply of after-sales services, including tangibles such as spare parts and consumables, related to the maintenance of industrial goods. We focus on the positioning of industrial services relative manufacturing, aiming at an integrated approach for manufacturing and service operations management. We extend the product-profiling concept of Hill to service operations, developing the concept of industrial service profiling, providing a detailed analysis of market and service offering characteristics relative production characteristics. The resulting profile reveals possible mismatches in the existing operations, and can also be used to identify areas in need of corrective actions.

Using speech and dialogue for interactive TV navigation

Interaction techniques for interactive television (iTV) are currently complex and difficult to use for a wide-range of viewers. Few previous studies have dealt with the potential benefits of multimodal dialogue interaction in the context of iTV for the purpose of flexibility, usability, efficiency, and accessibility. This paper investigates the benefits of introducing speech and connected dialogue for iTV interaction, and presents a case study in which a prototype system was built allowing users to navigate the information space and control the operation of the TV by a speech-based natural language interface. The system was evaluated by analysing the user experience in five categories capturing essential aspects of iTV interaction: interaction style, information load, data access, effectiveness and initiative. Design considerations relevant for speech and dialogue information systems for TV interfaces also emerged from the analysis.

Multimodal dialogue systems for interactive TV applications

Many studies have shown the advantages of building multimodal systems, but not in the interactive TV application context. This paper reports on a qualitative study of a multimodal program guide for interactive TV. The system was designed by adding speech interaction to an existing TV program guide. Results indicate that spoken natural language input combined with visual output is preferable for TV applications. Furthermore, user feedback requires a clear distinction between the dialogue systems domain result and system status in the visual output. Consequently, we propose an interaction model that consists of three entities: user, domain results, and system feedback.

Multimodal dialogue systems: a case study for interactive TV

Many studies have already shown the advantages of building multimodal systems. In this case study we have shown the advantages of combining natural language and a graphical interface in the interactive TV domain. In this paper we describe a multimodal dialogue TV program guide system that is a research prototype built for the case study by adding speech interaction to an already existing TV program guide. Study results indicate positive attitudes towards providing two input modes -- spoken natural language input and direct manipulation by means of remote control.