A digital smart product service system and a case study of the mining industry: MSPSS

Abstract

Mining equipment products and services no longer meet the needs of future development in the mining industry due to high safety and operational risk. The deep integration of the product-service system (PSS) and digitization is required in the mining industry to promote industry transformation and safe and efficient production without changing the traditional operation mode. This paper proposes a smart product-service system for the mining industry (MSPSS) consisting of a smart product subsystem, stakeholders, smart service subsystem, and smart decision-making subsystem. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and virtual reality (VR) are used for decision-making, product selection, operation, and maintenance. The smart product subsystem outputs reliable digital products using three stages: digital design, virtual simulation and planning, and virtual debugging. The smart service subsystem is driven by data and digital technology and provides fault diagnosis and online maintenance services for complex mining products. A case study indicates that all stakeholders can participate seamlessly in the design process. The smart product subsystem uses iterative optimization (more than 100 iterations) to obtain the design results interactively. The smart service subsystem provides digitalized services throughout the entire process. Thus, a stable, reliable, and comprehensive product and service solution is provided for complex mining conditions. The output is used to guide the design, debugging, and operation of physical equipment. The MSPSS has higher design quality and efficiency, a shorter design time, and lower design cost (key performance indicator (KPI)) than the traditional design method.