Product and Services Value Chain Management (ProSerV)

Investigating how to innovate and transform the product and services value chain through smart business and enterprise decisions
Product and Services Value Chain Management (ProSerV)

The ProSerV (Product and Services Value Chain Innovation through Advanced Technologies) Group investigates how to innovate and transform the product and services value chain through smart business and enterprise decisions, and by the effective use of advanced digital, knowledge management and decision analysis technologies. 

The main objective of ProSerV involves consolidating and enhancing research by pooling expertise and strengths from multiple disciplines, in order to better address important business and management issues across the value chain. As such the group is keen to engage academics from a range of disciplines both within and outside the University of Plymouth. Please contact Shaofeng Liu if you are interested in working with ProSerV. 

ProSerV Lead - Professor Shaofeng Liu

Professor Shaofeng Liu is Professor of Operations Management and Decision Making. She has published over 140 research papers and is the Associate Editor for Journal of Decision Systems and Senior Editor for Cogent Business & Management. She has been involved in a number of influential research projects funded by the European Commission and UK EPSRC/ESRC/Innovate UK, with a total value of over €40M. Currently she is PI and Co-I for three Horizon 2020 projects and one Erasmus Plus project. She is the academic supervisor for the post-doc Knowledge Transfer Partnership project with Wates and she is on the Management Board for the Euro Working Group on Decision Support Systems.

Contact Shaofeng and find out more about ProSerV.

<p>Professor Shaofeng Lui</p>

ProSerV sub-themes:

The ProSerV research group is inter-disciplinary and focuses on the integration of four intertwined cross-cutting themes that are vitally important to business success in the current climate of global digitisation and the knowledge economy:

  • product and service value chain
  • digital business
  • knowledge management
  • decision making.

The diagram opposite shows the overall picture of the product/service value chain innovation through advanced technologies, based on these four key research streams.

<p>ProSerV Themes 8</p>

Related projects:

2016-2020, Horizon 2020 project "Enhancing and implementing knowledge based ICT solutions within high risk and uncertain conditions for agriculture production systems (RUC-APS)", a €1.3M project funded by European Commission under the Marie Curie RISE scheme (Work Package Principal Investigator: Professor Shaofeng Liu).

2014-2016, EU Erasmus Plus KA2 project "Developing online tools to foster entrepreneurship in retail sector for young people (LET IT BE PROJECT)", a €120,832 project funded by the European Commission (Plymouth University Principal Investigator: Professor Shaofeng Liu). 

2017-2020, Horizon 2020 project "Blood Biomarker-based Diagnostic Tools for Early Stage Alzheimer’s Disease", a €3.5M project funded by the European Commission under the Marie Curie ETN scheme (Co-ordinator: Professor Genhua Pan from University of Plymouth working with Professors Nikolaos Tzokas and Shaofeng Liu in the Faculty of Business and Drs Drs Xinzhong Li, Camille Carroll and Ian Sheriff of the Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry).

2015-2018, Horizon 2020 project "Innovative Quality of Experience Management in Emerging Multimedia Services (QoE-Net)", a €3.1M project funded by the European Commission under the Marie Curie ETN scheme, with the University of Plymouth managing a €547K work package led by Dr Lingfen Sun working with Professor Shaofeng Liu and Professor Emmanuel Ifeachor).

2015-2017, Post-doc Knowledge Transfer Partnership project “Researching, evaluating and embedding sustainable technologies into Construction industry", funded by Innovate UK/EPSRC and Wates Construction, £146,000 (with Professor Steve Goodhew as Academic Lead working with Professor Shaofeng Liu and KTP Associate Dr Zainab Dangana.

Selected publications:

Liu, S., Moizer, J., Megicks, P., Kasturiratne, D. and Jayawickrama, U. (2014) "A knowledge chain management framework for global supply chain integration decisions", Production Planning and Control, Vol. 25, No. 8, pp. 639-649.

Tzokas, N, Kim, Y. A., Akbar, H. and Al-Dajani, H. (2015) "Absorptive capacity and performance: The role of customer relationship and technological capabilities in high-tech SMEs", Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 47, pp.134-142

Alkhuraiji, A., Liu, S., Oderanti, F. and Megicks, P. (2015) "New structured knowledge network for strategic decision making in IT innovative and implementable projects", Journal of Business Research, Vol. 69, No. 5, pp.1534-1538

Jayawickrama, U., Liu, S. and Smith, M.H. (2016) "Empirical evidence of an integrative knowledge competence framework for ERP systems implementation in UK industries", Computers in Industry, Vol. 82, pp.205-223.

Oyemomi, O., Liu, S., Neaga, I. and Alkhuraiji, A. (2016) "How knowledge sharing and business process contribute to organisational performance: using the fsQCA approach", Journal of Business Research, Vol. 69, No. 11, pp.5222-5227.

Akter, S., Fosso Wamba, S., Gunasekaran, A., Dubey, R. and Childe, S. (2016) "How to improve firm performance using big data analytics capability?", International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 186, pp.113-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2016.08.018

Gomez, M., Lopez, C. and Molina, A. (2015) "A model of tourism destination brand equity: The case of wine tourism destinations in Spain", Tourism Management, Vol. 51, pp.210-222

Gunasekaran, A., Papadopoulos, T., Dubey, R., Fosso Wamba, S., Childe, S. J., Hazen, B. and Akter, S. "Big data and predictive analytics for supply chain and organizational performance", Journal of Business Research, Vol. 70, pp. 308-317