No.59   December 1, 2002Industry   Solutions Services to Promote Business Innovation in the Manufacturing   NRI Production-Goods Core Team         Solutions services (i.e., comprehensive outsourcing of business processes) have started to expand. As a matter of fact, companies offering solutions services such as logistics solutions services provided by ALPS Logistics have started to emerge. The key to the solutions service business is the ability to identify the challenges confronting a customer and to design appropriate solutions. This ability essentially comes down to a wealth of experience and "user know-how" that has been accumulated in a wide variety of fields. As company scale can work as a positive factor, major manufacturing groups with diversified work processes have a high potential to provide competitive solutions services in the broader market. "Market testing" and "pilot project" can be methodologies to re-evaluate the competitiveness of a company's own business operations. These evaluations often reveal a company's hidden and valuable user know-how in non-core business operations (we call this "peripheral competence"). Moreover, designing solution services enables them to analyze the resources within their own company and the group companies. It also guides them to seek opportunities of selling such solution services and/or outsourcing some operations to adopt solution offered by other companies. In other words, large manufacturers can develop new businesses by selling in-group work processes and/or improve cost competitiveness by outsourcing some operations. Furthermore, the combination of these strategies can serve as indices in making selections and concentrating efforts in core operations in the course of group management. Contents I Solutions Services: The New Business Opportunities for Manufacturing Industry II Progress in Providing Solutions Services 1 Equipment Solutions Services by Asahi Engineering Co., Ltd. 2 Logistics Solutions Services by ALPS Logistics Co., Ltd. 3 OMRON's Shared Solutions Services 4 IT Solutions Services by NS Solutions Corporation 5 ERP Solutions Services by Hitachi Zosen Information Systems Co., Ltd. III Revaluation of Group's User Know-How and Company Scale 1 User Know-How as the Key to Solutions Service Business 2 Company Scale as the Basis for Initiating Solutions Service Businesses 3 Revaluation of User Know-How and Company Scale IV Potential of Solutions Service Businesses 1 Solutions Service Businesses Meriting Attention 2 Needs of User Companies for Solutions Services V Revaluating a Company's Own Business Operations through Designing a Pilot Project 1 Core Competence and Peripheral Competence 2 Techniques for Revaluating a Company's Own Business Operations VI Business Innovation through Design of Solutions Services 1 Optimization of Group Management by Selection and Concentration 2 Cost Structure Reforms 3 Creation of New Solutions Service Businesses VII Learning to Utilize the "Third Eye" GO to PDF