Industrial Product-Service Systems Research Articles

Towards a methodology to engineer industrial product-service system – Evidence from power and automation industry

Manufacturing companies whose products have become increasingly commoditized are currently striving to identify innovative value propositions allowing them to re-position themselves in the market. This is gradually leading to a business shift from delivering traditional transaction-based, product-centric offering to the provision of integrated product-service systems (PSS). However, the number of companies failing in successfully pursue such a transition is still increasing. Consequently, Service Engineering (SE), a discipline concerned with the systematic development and design of services and product-services, is gaining particular interest in both the scientific and practitioner communities. This paper contributes to these fields by proposing a complete overview of the applicability of the SErvice Engineering Methodology (SEEM) in an industrial context. The SEEM aims at supporting companies approaching the introduction of PSSs in their portfolio and suggests a structured decision-making process to (i) define the PSS offering most aligned with company product(s) and customer needs, (ii) (re-)engineer the (existing) service delivery processes, and (iii) balance the external performance (e.g. customer satisfaction, delivery time, service cycle time) with the internal performance (i.e. efficiency) of the service delivery process. The noteworthy benefits achievable through the SEEM are illustrated through a real case at the industrial partner ABB – a multinational company providing power and automation solutions. The implementation of all the SEEM steps is thoroughly described, and the advantages experienced along with the difficulties encountered are highlighted. Managerial implications and the main gaps to address in future research are also discussed.

Costing-based coordination between mt-iPSS customer and providers for job shop production using game theory

The industrial product-service system for Computer Numerical Control machine tool (mt-iPSS) has drawn much interest. Under the new paradigm of functional result-oriented mt-iPSS, mt-iPSS customer (i.e. owner of the workshop) pays for time or results of mt-iPSS providers. The present problem for mt-iPSS customer is how to timely identify the optimal machine tools, sequence and cutting parameters of operation to finish the jobs while mt-iPSS providers try to maximise their benefit in a non-cooperative game structure. In this paper, a Stackelberg game model is put forward to solve the coordination problem based on the costing of different job shop scheduling solutions under the result-oriented mt-iPSS paradigm. Then, to solve the established bi-level programming model of the Stackelberg game, a solution procedure based on hierarchical particle swarm optimisation is proposed. Finally, a case from a printing machinery enterprise is analysed to validate the proposed model. This research is expected to improve the quality and effectiveness of coordination for scheduling and process planning decision between mt-iPSS customer and multi-providers.

Development of a Novel Co-Creative Framework for Redesigning Product Service Systems

Product service systems (PSS) have been researched in academia and implemented in industry for more than a decade, and they bring plenty of benefits to various stakeholders, such as: customers, PSS providers, the environment, as well as society. However, the adoption of PSS in industry so far is limited compared to its potentials. One of the reasons leading to this limitation is that PSS design is tricky. So far, there are several methods to design PSS, but each of them has certain limitations. This paper proposes a co-creative framework, which is constructed using the concept of user co-creation. This novel framework allows designers to design PSS effectively in terms of users’ perception of PSS value, design quality and evaluation. The authors also introduce a case study to demonstrate and validate the proposed framework.

Cutting-tool delivery method in the context of industrial product service systems

Nowadays, as the manufacturing outsourcing activities are becoming increasingly explosive, cutting-tools are gradually being considered as a kind of strategical socialized manufacturing resource. Therefore, focusing on cutting-tools, this article proposes a novel cutting-tool service mode called industrial product service system for cutting-tools. Based on industrial product service system for cutting-tools, the methodology of cutting-tool delivery in the context of industrial product service system is further studied, which comprises two sub-models. First, a cutting-tool demand prediction model is established to obtain the types and quantities of cutting-tool demands in the next day from each industrial product service system for cutting-tool customer. Then, the second sub-model is a just-in-time cutting-tool delivery model, wherein, a modified economic order quantity model and genetic algorithm are applied to optimize the delivery time and routing constrained by the delivery time window. Finally, a comprehensive use case is studied to illustrate the feasibility and applicability of the proposed models.

Concept for a Sustainable Industrial Product Service Systems based on Field Data

Increasingly the thinking of sustainability becomes important in the design of Industrial Product Service Systems (IPSS) especially in the field of maintenance. This helps to achieve a longer lifetime of the product system, more efficiency regarding resource and reduces environmental pollution. In the product development it is an established principle to develop products in a sustainable way. But in IPSS the aspect of sustainability has to be considered too. Both - service and product - influence each other in the design of IPSS especially regarding maintenance. To ensure a sustainable design of IPSS, it is necessary to recognize all requirements regarding sustainability along the life cycle of service and product. Thus, an integrated concept for the design of a sustainable IPSS based on a high data quality, in this application field data, for excellence maintenance services is needed.

Extending the Functional Products definition with additional through-life-cycle aspects

The paper provides a comprehensive overview on which through-life cycle aspects of Functional Products (FP) are relevant to consider during development and later operation until end of life. The aspects, which are already proposed as part of the current definition of FP, are corroborated, and the additional new aspects found are proposed to extend the current definition of FP. An additional eight new aspects have been found, spanning, e.g., asset management, business model and research collaboration. Some of these new aspects may be relevant for the concepts of servitisation, through-life engineering services, product-service systems and industrial product-service systems as well. The practical implications of the results are that FP customers can improve their reasoning and requirement engineering together with FP providers. FP providers can, on the other hand, use the results to improve their long-term planning and activities from initial development activities (i.e. business case and requirement engineering) to operation at customer sites. The theoretical implications are that the additional new aspects and the proposed extended FP definition provide a foundation for researchers as well as indicating aspects/areas to further explore.

Bayesian Networks-based Association Rules and Knowledge Reuse in Maintenance Decision-Making of Industrial Product-Service Systems

Equipment manufacturing firms nowadays increasingly provide Industrial Product-Service Systems (IPS2) to improve productivity and service capacity, particularly in the current age of big data. Vast amounts of data are collected using database management systems from areas of product design, manufacturing, marketing, fault detection and maintenance service of IPS2. An urgent challenge in context of IPS2 is how to form reusable knowledge taking advantage of these data records for the sake of guiding subsequent maintenance decision-making. To handle this issue, data mining technology has been used in knowledge acquisition from different databases. However, it needs further investigation how to represent and reuse knowledge mining from these databases in IPS2 in relation to maintenance decision-making. Given this observation, this study first presents association rules in the form of Bayesian Networks that are mined from different databases of IPS2 and can be used to represent knowledge acquired. It then establishes a knowledge reuse framework based on Bayesian inference, which is used to support related decision-making in maintenance operations. Lastly, the proposed methodology is applied to a real-world case in an agricultural equipment manufacturing enterprise. The experimental results using real-time data sets illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in handling maintenance decision-making associated with related fault phenomena.

Extending the Functional Products definition with additional through-life-cycle aspects

The paper provides a comprehensive overview on which through-life cycle aspects of Functional Products (FP) are relevant to consider during development and later operation until end of life. The aspects, which are already proposed as part of the current definition of FP, are corroborated, and the additional new aspects found are proposed to extend the current definition of FP. An additional eight new aspects have been found, spanning, e.g., asset management, business model and research collaboration. Some of these new aspects may be relevant for the concepts of servitisation, through-life engineering services, product-service systems and industrial product-service systems as well. The practical implications of the results are that FP customers can improve their reasoning and requirement engineering together with FP providers. FP providers can, on the other hand, use the results to improve their long-term planning and activities from initial development activities (i.e. business case and requirement engineering) to operation at customer sites. The theoretical implications are that the additional new aspects and the proposed extended FP definition provide a foundation for researchers as well as indicating aspects/areas to further explore.

Automated Vendor Selection for Industrial Service Shares

Industrial Product-Service Systems (IPS2) fulfil specific customer needs in the industrial area due to the appropriate combination of product and service shares. Through the customer individual orientation of IPS2 the need for identification of suitable network partners for service delivery arises.In this paper a method for the automated vendor selection for industrial service shares will be developed and evaluated. To achieve this goal, an investigation of possible service shares in the field of machine tools is necessary. Subsequently the parameters of the identified service shares and their potential values will be assigned.The comparison of defined parameter values of the customer's query and all registered providers facilitates the automated mediation of appropriate providers. For IPS2, the presented approach holds several benefits compared to existing approaches. These include the ability of standardised comparison of the providers’ potential for service delivery and the efficient selection of appropriate providers under consideration of uncertainty.Subsequently an application example of possible service shares for a customer request in the machine tool domain will be given. An outlook on further work and future potential will complete the paper.

An Approach Based on Improved Grey Model for Predicting Maintenance Time of IPS2

Maintenance service is the most important part in industrial product-service system (iPSS). To enhance the proactiveness of maintenance service, the failure time of product need to be predicted. This study provides insight into how the maintenance time can be predicted accurately for the service decision-making of IPSS based on the historical failure time data, avoiding the dependence on mechanical condition monitoring. An improved grey prediction model is introduced to obtain a predictive interval of maintenance service time which is used as basis for making a decision of proactive maintenance service. The method is applied in an instance of maintenance service for agricultural machinery. In three examples of different types of agricultural machinery, the predicted intervals of maintenance time are given and the fitted values have high accordance with the real ones. The result shows that this approach can be used effectively to predict production failure time. Moreover, the output results of this approach can provide the necessary support to make a decision for proactive maintenance service without the dependence on mechanical condition monitoring in a reliable way.

A Semantic Information Retrieval Framework within the Scope of IPS2-PLM

The Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) approach faces new challenges if transferred for Industrial Product Service Systems (IPS2). The vast amount of heterogeneous data generated throughout an IPS2's lifecycle complicates the retrieval of required information for IPS2 actors. However, these actors’ risky decisions determine an IPS2's success during use phase. Thus, an approach is needed that supports actors in finding targeted information. This paper presents a framework that utilizes semantic and text mining techniques in order to improve the information retrieval process in IPS2-PLM and to allow IPS2 actors to focus on their value-adding tasks rather than spending a lot of time for finding information.

Situation Adapted Field Service Support Using Business Process Models and ICT Based Human-Machine-Interaction

The use of conventional service manuals is still common among service technicians during on-site support. If problems occur during the service process, service technicians have to analyze the situation and react accordingly. Problem analysis is subject to uncertainty in time, because the optimal course of action strongly depends on the current situation. Therefore, intelligent situation adapted support is needed to replace static guidance. This article describes a concept for the generation of interactive and situation adapted service instructions that are dynamically derived from a service process model.After a brief introduction to on-site service support, the article describes in detail how service processes can be modelled by using the method of Integrated Enterprise Modeling (IEM). Subsequently, it shows how and in which phases automated test routines can be used to support the service process, followed by a critical discussion of possible information and communication technology (ICT) architectures to implement human-machine-interaction.The concept includes an ICT-based approach for human-machine-interaction to trigger test routines on the machine to receive information about the condition of the machine. For Industrial Product-Service Systems (IPS2), the presented approach offers several benefits compared to existing approaches. These include the ability of tracking and influencing service processes as well as the simple adaption of new IPS2 modules in case of changing business models or customer requirements. The article concludes giving a specific scenario and an outlook on future research to be done.

A New Approach for the Development of Services for Industrial Product-Service Systems

Cars and machines are developed today based on a selection of specific parameters fulfilling the requirements of targeted customers. However, this approach is not commonly adopted in service engineering. Therefore, this research approach aims to systematically develop a series of service parameters to enhance the effectiveness of industrial service systems for establishing new services. As proposed a combination of these parameters shall fulfill any demand resulting from the requirements analysis. Consequently services can be systematically designed with a tool box of parameters. Furthermore, previously designed services can have demanded adjustment to match the requirements of the new services, based on a reselection of the design parameters.

A Study on the Computation Model for the Product Service System Development

Today the manufacturing industries must transform their focus from the traditional physical products to the service embedded products, thus the industrial product service system design is very essential. The system should satisfy the demands of flexibility, open, and re-configurability of enterprises’ resources, model for service resource based on ontology was referred. The hierarchy-relation and properties of resource were described, and the property-oriented metadata structure of resource was constructed according to the resource description framework (RDF). And furthermore based on the knowledge ontology, the intrinsic of resource and the hierarchy relation of resource were described. Finally in protege environment, the construction method of service resource bases was illustrated with an example.

A framework for Industrial Product–Service Systems risk management

With the fast development of service economy, researches and applications of Industrial Product–Service Systems have become popular. Advantages and benefits of Industrial Product–Service Systems are widely discussed, while risks and uncertainties resulting from this transformation tide are rarely investigated. There are strong appeals from the industry for a holistic Industrial Product–Service Systems risk management architecture. Based on a full review on the existing work, an Industrial Product–Service Systems risk management framework integrating multiple methods is proposed trying to provide a possible solution. Structure–process correlation analysis is used for Industrial Product–Service Systems modeling. Risk recognition matrix and graphic risk units integrating with dynamic Bayesian network are developed for risk recognition and modeling. Entropy reduction value–based and effect chains’ visualized analysis offer an efficient approach for key risk and key node recognition. The proposed methods get tested and verified with a case study of risk management for hydraulic system maintenance service in excavator Industrial Product–Service Systems.

Environmental and economic sustainability-aware resource service scheduling for industrial product service systems

As the sustainable development and servitization in manufacturing industry boost, industrial product service system (iPSS) has especially attracted much attention, due to its ability to provide systematic solutions by integrating industrial products and associated services. During the iPSS life cycle, product-service activities in the running phase take up the main part in time view. To improve sustainability, the efficiency and environmental impact in this phase is urgently required. Thus different kinds of resources for product-services need to be well allocated to improve hybrid economic and environmental benefits. In this paper, we discussed a multi-objective resource service scheduling problem in iPSS running phase, and consider the objectives of comprehensive customer satisfaction degree, resource utility efficiency and product-service cost. Further, the problem is formulated based on the above three objectives. Besides, a modified NSGA-II algorithm is described to solve the problem. A demonstrative case from a Blower Power Company of China is studied to verify the application of the proposed model. It is expected that our model would provide a deep insight into the sustainable resource service scheduling for iPSS suppliers who provide product-services for multiple customers.

Planning of Maintenance Activities – A Current State Mapping in Industry

Industrial Product Service System (PSS) thinking can be applied to production system by considering it as a product. Prior studies show that strategic planning of the maintenance activities in manufacturing industries holds great potential to increase productivity. Planning of maintenance activities is therefore an integral decision making aspect for maintenance engineers and it is important to analyze how industries are currently working with planning of maintenance activities and what additional support is needed. This paper aims at mapping the current state of the work procedures for maintenance engineers and planners in the industry and analyzes the gap from current practices to the strategic planning which could increase productivity. The study specifically focuses on how industries work today with finding critical resource, performing criticality analysis, and planning maintenance. A descriptive research approach is followed, where empirical data is collected in Swedish industry through three different data collection methods. The results show the state-of-art industrial practices and the gaps in maintenance planning.

Maintenance of Shape Memory Actuator Systems - Applications, Processes and Business Models

Today products are more and more substitutabledue to progress in information technology as well as globalization. New competitors, particularly from developing and emerging countries are putting established companies under pressure, due to lower production costs. In consequence, the prices and thus realizable profits for companies are decreasing. Focusing on the customer value can help to break this trend. In this way, the product understanding is changing. Besides offering products, offering services and combining both is getting more and more important. However, the product requirements are changing and may require new technologies. For small-to-medium-sized actuator applications shape memory alloy based actuator systems are a promising technology. In addition to the advantages in physical and mechanical properties, the integrated sensor function allows a simple condition monitoring and thus easy maintenance processes. Companies can generate new value for customers and are therefore able to improve their competitiveness. The consequence is that companies are offering new business models. For this reason, these actuators are ideal for industrial product-service systems. This paper illustrates the maintenance processes of shape memory based actuator systems using the integrated sensor function. Based on these maintenance processes andsuitable business models are designed as well as analyzed. As a result, recommendations for these actuator systems are provided.It is vital to introduce the relevant areas like shape memory alloy based actuator systems, industrial product service systems, maintenance and business models in the field of mechanical engineering first.

Review of the Modelling Approaches for Availability Contracts in the Military Context

The defence context more recently has been experiencing a significant shift towards servitization. As competition has increased, commercial strategies are increasingly moving towards providing through-life solutions for complex engineering products such as submarines. Within such a context value for money is an essential driver in a life cycle sense for selecting a bid. The defence sector has largely been affected by this change in the business environment. Industrial Product Service System (IPS2) is a model of providing services that satisfy industrial customers and aims to reduce lifecycle impacts of products and services through product servicing, remanufacturing and recycling. This approach has proved to be an effective solution to enhance the services support in military projects. IPS2 offers client value by responding more efficiently to the client demands with reduced prices; it is delivered in the form of contracting approaches between Ministry of Defence (MoD) and industry; these contracts can differ in several aspects as risk sharing, application level, ownership policy and supportability specifications vary. This research focuses on Contracting for Availability (CfA), which is a particular approach of IPS2.The paper aims to present the review of literature in designing support strategies for CfA, identifying the good practices and challenges, and to propose a systematic approach to fill the industrial and academic gap towards an optimization of the current modelling process. This work starts by presenting a literature review in IPS2; it then moves into the optimization processes, describing how contractors currently design a long term service support contract in the military context with better value for money and high level of system readiness. The key cost and performance drivers are identified and a framework is presented to enhance the design process of CfA. The methodology of the paper relies on literature. This research aims to extend the work of several authors in predicting the cost of services in the military contracts.

Evaluation of Cost Structures of Additive Manufacturing Processes Using a New Business Model

The individualization and customization of products is one the most important trends for industrial companies. New technologies like additive manufacturing (e. g. 3D-printing) are enablers for the further development of this trend. Companies offering production systems for those technologies are more and more required to embed Industrial Product Service Systems (IPSS) to assert theirselves on the market.The aim of this research is to develop a business model which evaluates process costs of additive manufacturing technologies. The relevant technologies are Stereolithography, Selective Laser Melting, Fused Deposition Modeling, Selective Laser Melting, Electron Beam Melting and Laser Cladding. Product costs can be calculated easily and the outcome of the evaluation will serve as a valuable decision base for industrial decision makers on how to invest in a special technology. By embedding this service in the production system/ machines software, a big step for a new industrial service is provided.The paper is structured in four steps. Firstly, based on a detailed description of the state of the art research, an analysis of the most important process steps in additive manufacturing is presented. A new business model for additive manufacturing technologies is introduced afterwards including the implementation of this business model in a software tool. Furthermore case studies for different product types and product quantities are explained and detailed values for process costs are provided. In the last step, a sensitivity analysis is done to find the most important parameters (cost drivers) for those case studies.The business model and the evaluation of cost structures for additive manufacturing technologies is unique in the field of IPSS. Using a cost and investment calculation, the companies can significantly increase the effort and quality of price calculations for their products. Furthermore cost drivers are evaluated and recommendations for technology related investments are given.