Demand‐supply chain representation: A tool for economic organizing of industrial services

The purpose of this paper is to propose demand-supply chain representation as a tool to support economic organizing between original equipment manufacturers going downstream and customers considering how to better outsource maintenance and asset management. This paper is a presentation of a representation tool using a design theory template. The concept of demand visibility point and requirements penetration point can be used to describe different ways of economic organizing as interaction between demand and supply. The proposed representation scheme supports the identification of visibility-based changes in economic organization, such as vendor-managed inventory and reliability-based maintenance services. The paper is conceptual and requires further empirical work. The representation tool can be used both by practitioners engaged in outsourcing maintenance and practitioners involved in the development of industrial service offerings. The paper introduces demand-supply chain representation to development of industrial service offerings and outsourcing of maintenance activities.