A case is made for further developing a branch of systems engineering that focuses on problemsand issues which arise in the service sector. We promulgate this special focus not only because of thesize and importance of the service sector but also because of the unique opportunities that systemsengineering can exploit in the design and joint production and delivery of services. We begin byconsidering the economic, technological and demographic contexts within which the service sectorhas flourished; we then address both services, especially emerging services, and systems engineering,followed by a discussion of how to advance the field of service systems engineering, and concludingwith several remarks. In particular, a number of service systems engineering methods are identified toenhance the design and production/delivery of services, especially taking advantage of the uniquefeatures that characterize services - namely, services, especially emerging services, are information-driven, customer-centric, e-oriented, and productivity-focused.