Research opportunities in service process design

This paper presents an overview of the new issues and research opportunities related to four service operations design topics—the design of retail and e‐tail service processes, design of service processes involving waiting lines and workforce staffing, service design for manufacturing, and re‐engineering service processes. All four topics are motivated by new technologies (particularly web‐based technologies) and require a multi‐disciplinary approach to research. For each topic, the paper presents an overview of the topic, the relevant frameworks, and a discussion of the research opportunities.