Strategic service supplier selection in servitized manufacturing: A linguistic preference-based decision support system

The global transition toward manufacturing servitization has compelled product-centric manufacturers to establish strategic alliances with knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) providers, facilitating cost-effective transformation and enhanced product-service offerings. While traditional supplier selection has been extensively studied, the unique challenges of evaluating and selecting service suppliers in servitized manufacturing contexts remain inadequately addressed, particularly regarding systematic decision support mechanisms. This study addresses this research gap by developing a novel linguistic preference-based decision support system for strategic service supplier selection in servitized manufacturing environments. The proposed system introduces a comprehensive evaluation framework that integrates service, supplier, and societal dimensions through 21 meticulously defined criteria. To address the inherent uncertainty and complexity in service supplier assessment, the framework incorporates flexible linguistic decision-making methods that enable systematic criteria weight determination and supplier ranking. The system's practical validity was demonstrated through empirical implementation in a multinational servitized manufacturing company, where it successfully facilitated strategic supplier selection decisions. The findings reveal that successful service supplier selection in servitized manufacturing extends beyond conventional metrics, highlighting the critical importance of factors such as collaboration capability, communication effectiveness, social responsibility, and domain expertise of KIBS providers. This research contributes significantly to both decision sciences and manufacturing servitization literature while offering practical insights for manufacturers navigating their servitization transformation.