Towards an Understanding of Cyber-physical Systems as Industrial Software-Product-Service Systems

Abstract

New forms of solutions with a declined share of mechanics or hardware and instead an increased share of software and (software-enabled) services on the overall customer value proposition, so called cyber-physical systems (CPS), have been emerging for some time now. Current research highlights the underlying technical challenges but lacks a well-founded conceptualization for CPS that reflects its character as a software-enabled hybrid solution, consisting of software as well as of service and tangible product parts. The latter may facilitate research on CPS from a business-oriented and a customer value creation perspective rather than solely from a technical perspective. For this purpose, the present contribution proposes the conceptualization of the industrial software-product-service system. It is based upon empirical findings as well as theoretical considerations on the concept of industrial product-service systems and substantiated by suggested future research directions, derived with the help of the proposed conceptualization.