DIVA: Trade in services in industrial value-added processes

The aim of the project was to investigate the causes and manifestations of trade in services in order to assess its further development. In addition, the project results should provide an evaluation and decision-making basis for policymakers and companies by demonstrating possibilities for implementing management concepts that lead to the optimisation and reduction of trade in services.

The research design of the project focused on the following areas:

• Exploration study: In the context of a partially standardized company survey, manufacturing and service companies were surveyed in personal interviews.
• Representative survey: In a two-stage quantitative survey, companies across Germany and across industries were surveyed and on this basis the traffic effects of service provision/relationship were examined.
• Case studies: In seven practical examples, manufacturing and service companies were closely examined, particularly with regard to the information and communication technologies used.  In cooperation with the companies, measures developed were evaluated with regard to their traffic-reducing effect.

Based on the results of the empirical studies, scenarios for the further development of trade in services were developed.

Website of the DIVA project
[1]

 Project Sponsors:

Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy
[2]

Promoter:

TÜV Management Systems GmbH [3]

Project partners:

Institute for Applied Transport and Tourism Research [4]
German Aerospace Center, Institute of Transport Research [5]
Research Institute for Telecommunications [6]
Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering
[7]