Product Service System

6 Key excerpts on "Product Service System"

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  eBook - ePub

  Servitization Strategy and Managerial Control

  • Anna Pistoni, Lucrezia Songini(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  2.2. Product Service System (PSS): KEY FEATURES

  As highlighted previously, an important body of literature deals with the PSS, treating it as a special case of servitization or an autonomous proposal. Goedkoop, Van Halen, te Riele, and Rommens (1999) define PSS as a combination of products and services capable of meeting user needs. The PSS key elements are as follows: product , a tangible commodity manufactured to be sold and capable of fulfilling a user’s needs; service , an activity done for others with an economic value and often done on a commercial basis; system , a collection of elements including their relations. Baines et al. (2007) , instead, state that ‘the concept of PSS is a special case of servitization that values the performance or utilization of products instead of their properties and obtains differentiation through the integration of products and services that provide use value for the customer’. PSS combines physical products and services in a system to deliver the required user functionality (Baines et al., 2007 ). Moreover, according to Mont (2002) , a PSS is ‘a system of products, services, supporting networks and infrastructure designed to be competitive, satisfy customer needs and have a low environmental impact’. This is consistent with Wong who sees a PSS as fitting into a spectrum where pure products are at one hand and pure services are at the other.

  PSS may be considered, therefore, as a market proposition that extends the traditional functionality of a product by incorporating additional services. Here the emphasis is on the ‘sale of use’ rather than the ‘sale of product’.1 According to the aforementioned definition, a PSS delivers value in use. Particularly, the purpose of services is to provide or to improve the product performance for the customer throughout the whole product life cycle (Aurich and Fuchs, 2004 ; Takata et al., 2004 ). This requires a holistic view on the structure of physical and non-physical PSS components. In fact, regarding the product life-cycle oriented management of PSS, two perspectives on the same concept have to be distinguished (Aurich & Fuchs, 2004 ). For the manufacturer, the life cycle starts with planning and developing the PSS followed by manufacturing its physical product core and the realization of the corresponding services. From the customer point of view, the life cycle of a PSS contains the buying decision and purchasing, the utilization and disinvestment (Aurich, Wolf, Siener, & Schweitzer, 2009 ).2

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  Systems Engineering

  Practice and Theory

  • Boris Cogan(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • IntechOpen

    (Publisher)

  Service in this chapter includes operation, maintenance, repair, upgrade, take-back, and consultation. In addition to this definition, other authors (Tukker and Tischner 2006) regard PSS as a value proposition, one including its network and infrastructure. Another concept, named Total Care Products (Functional Products), has been developed as well with some connection to PSS. It comprises “combinations of hardware and support services”. The economically efficient functioning of this concept should be achieved by the proposition of an “intimate business relationship” between the service provider and the customer. As a result, both the provider and the customer obtain benefits through sharing existing business risks (Alonso-Rasgado, Thompson et al. 2004; Alonso-Rasgado and Thompson 2006). Furthermore, the proposal of a “life cycle-oriented design” (Aurich, Fuchs et al. 2006) highlights an important step for the * Corresponding Author Systems Engineering – Practice and Theory 148 “product and technical service design processes” integration. It is also interesting that Aurich et al. address designing products and services based on life cycle thinking. Furthermore, some specific engineering procedures and computer tools have been developed and validated with industrial cases (e.g. (Sakao and Shimomura 2007; Sakao, Birkhofer et al. 2009; Sakao, Shimomura et al. 2009)). However, the research in this area is still in its infancy and a number of questions remain unanswered. Specifically, a general weakness in existing literature is that even though a large number of authors have stressed PSS’ environmental and economic potential (e.g. (Roy 2000; Mont, Singhal et al. 2006)), very few studies have proved PSS’ potential for changing environmental performance. In the manufacturing industry, the trend of servicizing has been evident regardless of the environmental concern or the academic debate (e.g. (Sakao, Napolitano et al. 2008)).

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  eBook - ePub

  Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Product Design

  • Jonathan Chapman(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Despite the PSS concept being relatively new, it has been almost thirty years since the first definitions appeared and probably fifty since the first cases in industry were identified. However the number of PSS in the market place is still very low. This narrow adoption of the concept by industry, particularly in the case of sustainable PSS, can be explained by different factors, including: partial understanding of the PSS concept (Cook et al., 2006; Hernandez-Pardo, 2012), limited knowledge regarding sustainable business models (Hernandez-Pardo, 2012), lack of evidence of successful cases that can be transferable to different business scenarios (Cook et al., 2006; Mont, 2002a), and the absence of market incentives and appropriate regulations.

  Product Service Systems and sustainability

  Not all Product Service Systems can be considered to be sustainable. However, it is possible with PSS to look at options for radically reducing resource use or even breaking the link to consumption. In the longer term, this could be more sustainable than other offers currently in the market.

  Types of Product Service Systems

  Three basic types of PSS are recognized according to the combination and importance of each tangible and intangible component in the offer (Cook et al., 2006; Mont, 2002b; Tukker and Tischner, 2004). The first, product-oriented PSS arises where there is a product complemented by services which enable that product to be maintained, replaced or updated. In this case, the physical product usually remains the property of the customer (Cook et al., 2006). An example of these are additional warranties which might accompany electrical products. These type of PSS have the benefit of potentially extending the life of the product though adopting a number of strategies such as reuse, repair, reconditioning or upgrading.

  The second is use-oriented PSS

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  Enterprise Interoperability: Smart Services and Business Impact of Enterprise Interoperability

  • Martin Zelm, Frank-Walter Jaekel, Guy Doumeingts, Martin Wollschlaeger, Martin Zelm, Frank-Walter Jaekel, Guy Doumeingts, Martin Wollschlaeger, Martin Wollschlaeger(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-ISTE

    (Publisher)

  et al’s., in their chapter, describe the “Collaborative Product-Service Factory” persona which is identified by the Connected Factories H2020 project as one of the most promising scenarios for the 2025 Factories of the Future. In addition, two main H2020 projects of the Product-Service Systems PSS cluster (ICP4LIFE and PSYMBIOSYS) are discussed, which identify technological and organizational challenges in order to implement a 360 degree interoperability between Products and Services in a Manufacturing Industry. Organizational challenges, being mainly related to Knowledge-Sentiment and Business-Innovation dichotomies, are currently limiting the adoption of PSSs in Manufacturing. Regarding the technological challenges, the interoperability between Design-Manufacturing and Real-Digital world are mentioned.

  Considering the chapters collected in this part of the book, it is possible to conclude that the development of PSS benefits at the same time research development and industrial application through several European Projects in the frame of H2020. The last chapters shows also how to link these developments with Factories of the Future.

  Chapter written by Guy DOUMEINGTS, Sergio GUSMEROLI, Amir PIRAYESH and Giuditta PEZZOTTA. Passage contains an image

  45 Identifying New PSS Concepts: the Product-Service Concept Tree

  45.1. Introduction

  Nowadays, a lot of manufacturing companies facing commoditization of offering and intense competition have been attracted by the possibility of differentiating themselves from competitors by introducing product-related services in their traditional portfolio [OST 15]. This change in their offering is due to the modification of their customers’ behaviors and their increasing interest in companies’ services [REX 09, BAI 13]. As a result, manufacturers are changing their business models by delivering a Product-Service System (PSS), incorporating service-related activities in their value proposition. Therefore, the evolution towards a new business model where products are integrated with services creates a strong need for methods and tools supporting all the design and development phases [CAV 12].

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  Sustainable Manufacturing: Challenges, Solutions and Implementation Perspectives

  • Jérémy Bonvoisin, Günther Seliger, Rainer Stark(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Springer Open

    (Publisher)

  PSS come with new business models, which often focus on providing more value-add from one installed base of a product, by means of some form of product life extension (often through sharing), and therefore dematerialization of the physical artefacts, which are component parts of the PSS under offer (Bey and Mcaloone 2006 ). It is in this time period that many companies are starting to formulate sustain-ability goals, together with ways in which these will be measured, be they envi-ronmental, social and/or business-oriented. The very intensive period of tool building has slowed in this decade, with more emphasis being placed on how to actually successfully select from the large lists of tools and methods and implement the most suitable tools within the company (Pigosso et al. 2011 ; Bovea and Perez-Belis 2012 ). This is a positive development, as we can identify over 800 ecodesign best practices already (Pigosso et al. 2014 ) — the focus must now be on how to ensure successful implementation of these tools and methods into the business-and product development processes of the enterprise. Together with the shift from products to PSS as a standard sustainability design object, the basic approach has shifted, so as to incorporate more sustainable deci-sion points at a given time, thereby encompassing a systems approach towards sustainability enhancement. Nevertheless, many companies are not yet realizing the full bene fi t of their efforts towards sustainability improvement, often rendering sustainability as an activity that may not any longer be seen as a net cost to the company, but is still not a suf fi cient value-creator in itself. In this decade, social sustainability is a clear focus point for the organization and a number of projects (often in collaborations between academia and enterprises) have been completed, where social sustainability methods and metrics have been developed, tried and tested (Ny et al. 2006 ; Bostr ö m 2012 ).

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  New Business for Old Europe

  Product-Service Development, Competitiveness and Sustainability

  • Arnold Tukker, Ursula Tischner(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Table 5.2 the PSS specific tools that are used in the methodologies are listed (in bold). Following all the research into best practice in (sustainable) PSS methodology and tools the authors of this book have developed an easy and accessible guide to running a first PSS project for companies. It is a compilation and synthesis of the researched methods and tools and enables companies (and students) to run a first PSS project in order to investigate the subject and find out whether it is of interest and useful for them to develop new PSS business strategies and offers. The guide is based on a PowerPoint presentation that guides the user through the steps of a PSS project. It can be found in Annex 1.

  5.3 Product-service system design tools

  Most of the PSS development and design methodologies presented above suggest working with certain tools at different steps in the process and for different purposes. Such (PSS-specific) tools are indicated in bold in Table 5.2 . Below some of the most interesting tools are presented together with a general overview. More tools descriptions can be found in Annex 2 in alphabetical order.

  5.3.1 Tools overview

  In the overview presented in Figure 5.16 the different tools that are used in PSS design methods are ordered according to their complexity and to six fields of application which more or less explicitly exist in every PSS process:

  • General process management
  • Analysis/assessment of strengths and weaknesses
  • Decision-making, selecting and setting priorities
  • Creativity/finding ideas
  • Combination of multiple criteria and detailing design
  • Implementation

  There are also some gaps visible in the overview diagram of PSS tools marked by shaded boxes. In the past some gaps have been identified by research and some of the developed methodologies presented in the previous section have tried to close these gaps; but there are still some left. The approaches to close the gaps are included in the diagram. Similar tools are displayed as a group.

  FIGURE 5.16

  Tools overview; ordered by complexity and by purpose within the development of PSS

  5.3.2 Tools for general process management

  Tools that can be used for PSS process management have their background in general project management (e.g. planning, flowcharts). A general ecodesign scheme can be found in ISO 14062 as mentioned in Section 5.1.1 on Product design. Visible from the research is a gap in process management tools that deal with multi-stakeholder aspects of PSS. As PSS often involve more stakeholders than pure product or service design, adequate tools for network management, organisation of co-operation and involvement of customers are needed. The ‘partnership design plan’, developed in the HiCS project is a promising approach (see Annex 2).

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