Collaborative Networks in Person-Related Services – Designing Humane and Efficient Interaction Processes in Childcare

Collaborative networks are becoming increasingly important in production and product-service-systems. By linking cooperation partners along the value chain, they offer the opportunity to make the product-related value creation process efficient and transparent. In addition, collaborative networks facilitate the work of employees by improving social and organizational working conditions. Driven by digitalization and its efficiency and work facilitation potential, providers of person-related services are also increasingly using collaborative networks. This raises the question of how collaborative networks must be (re)designed in the context of social services to support the core of work and value creation, the personal interaction between people. To answer this question, a novel social service engineering approach is applied that combines methods of work science with those of service engineering and design to address the specifics of designing person-related services. The potentials of the approach are exemplified by the concrete use case of childcare.