PSS Design Evaluation via KPIs and Lean Design Assistance Supported by Context Sensitivity Tools

Abstract

Over the last decade, Product-Service System (PSS) has been established as a prominent business model which promises sustainability for both customers and organizations. A great amount of literature work has been devoted to PSS issues, but there is fairly limited published work on integrated and easily applicable evaluation methodologies for PSS design, as well as lack of Lean PSS approaches. Contributing to these directions, the present work introduces a conceptual methodology for the evaluation and improvement of the PSS design procedure using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Lean rules respectively, applied throughout all stages of PSS design lifecycle. The methodology contains two phases: i) PSS design evaluation, and ii) Lean PSS design assistance. According to the evaluation phase, a certain appropriate set of KPIs is selected and suggested to the PSS designer via a context sensitivity analysis (CSA) tool through a pool of 170 KPIs, which have been identified after intensive literature survey, and systematically classified into four main categories: Design, Manufacturing, Customer, and Environmental. From the collected and classified KPIs, a successive grouping is carried out of those KPIs that contribute to the Sustainability of the designed PSS offering. During the phase of Lean design assistance, Lean Rules are selected using CSA, and suggested to the designer at all design steps to ensure the minimization of wasteful activities. Enabler for the context awareness is the availability of feedback gathered from the manufacturing, shop-floor experts and the different types of Customers (Business or final-product Customers), as well as the PSS lifecycle stages which the designer treats. An ontology knowledge model for KPIs and Lean rules is proposed to support the CSA. The methodology is discussed in a case study of the PSS design from a mould-making industry.