Smart Product-service Systems Research Articles

Conceptual Modeling of Extended Collision Warning System from the Perspective of Smart Product-Service System.

While Product-Service Systems (PSS) have a potential sustainability impact by increasing a product’s life and reducing resource consumption, the lack of ownership might lead to less responsible user behavior. Smart PSS can overcome this obstacle and guarantee correct and safe PSS use. In this context, intelligent connected vehicles (ICVs) with PSS can effectively reduce traffic accidents and ensure the safety of vehicles and pedestrians by guaranteeing optimal and safe vehicle operation. A core subsystem to support that is the collision-warning system (CWS). Existing CWSs are, however, limited to in-car warning; users have less access to the warning information, so the result of CWS for collision avoidance is insufficient. Therefore, CWS needs to be extended to include more elements and stakeholders in the collision scenario. This paper aims to provide a novel understanding of extended CWS (ECWS), outline the conceptual framework of ECWS, and contribute a conceptual modeling approach of ECWS from the smart PSS perspective at the functional level. It defines an integrated solution of intelligent products and warning services. The function is modeled based on the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ). Functions of an ECWS from the perspective of smart PSS can be comprehensively expressed to form an overall solution of integrated intelligent products, electronic services, and stakeholders. Based on the case illustration, the proposed method can effectively help function modeling and development of the ECWS at a conceptual level. This can effectively avoid delays due to traffic accidents and ensure the safety of vehicles and pedestrians.

Perceived Values to Evaluate Smart Product-Service Systems of Smart Kitchen Appliances

In recent years, the need to develop a user-centric Smart Product-Service Systems (smart PSS) with user experience (UX) has been widely recognized by both industry and academia. Although perceived value is a key driver of smart product/service development with unique experience, existing research has rarely systematically explored the perceived value of smart PSS that can be identified, which could lead organizations to be unable to adapt to this rapid digital transformation. Thus, this study adopted smart kitchen appliances to identify which dimensions of perceived value are influential in the development of the smart PSS with UX. The primary objectives of this study were to: (1) develop a comprehensive perceived value scale of smart PSS; and (2) validate the scale’s stability and goodness of fit. The analysis results of this study show that a one-order confirmatory factor analysis is effective for verifying the scale. Five latent variables, usefulness, flexibility, reliability, fee, and technicality, and 19 observable variables can be used as effective evaluation measurement indicators to demonstrate that a value-based viewpoint is crucial for development of the smart PSS with UX in the organization.

A data-driven innovative design method for smart product-service systems to achieve mass personalization in rehabilitation

Smart product-service system (Smart PSS), as an emerging digital paradigm, offers users solution bundles to enhance the digitalization capability of the system by utilizing user-generated data. Massive information can be collected to investigate the dynamic changes of user requirements and assists the developers in designing personalized products and services. Meanwhile, key technologies (i.e. big data analysis and cloud computing) have enabled upgrading the rehabilitation equipment from the traditional physical training device to the personalized smart rehabilitation product-service system. However, few studies focus on gathering and utilizing user-generated physiological data to guide the innovative design of rehabilitation solutions in the Smart PSS environment. To fill this gap, an innovative design method is proposed to guide the Smart PSS development in the personalized rehabilitation field. The presented approach can be divided into three phases: the research phase, the development phase, and the usage phase. A personalized lower limb rehabilitation smart product-service system was described to explain the proposed approach.

Kano-FBS model: a data-driven innovative design approach for smart product-service system development

Smart product-service system (Smart PSS), as an emerging digital paradigm, should meet user expectations and optimize their experience with a higher degree of sustainability. As a complex solution bundle with digital technology, its innovative design method differs from the existing method for traditional products. For a reason that massive user-generated data can be collected in the usage stage, which can be utilized to obtain new user requirements and calculate the user satisfaction degree. According to the real-time user preference information, some modules can be upgraded or adjusted in order to extend the lifecycle of the sustainable Smart PSS. Nevertheless, few studies focus on conducting innovative design by concerning massive information collected in the usage stage in a sustainable Smart PSS environment, let alone a novel approach to support the information re-use in product development of other fields. Aiming to fill this gap, a new innovative design methodology is proposed by combining Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) and Kano model to guide Smart PSS development. User requirements and behaviors are predicted and analysed by forecasting and collecting information from the perspective of information. As an illustrative case study, a self-service medicine vending system is described to explain the proposed approach. This research provides guidance for Smart PSS in the medical field.

Inquiry and Analysis of Challenges in the Development of Smart Product-Service Systems

AbstractIn a smart product-service system (smart PSS), non-tangible services are bundled with tangible products as well as options for information and communication technologies. Enterprises offer smart PSS in order to provide added value for customers and deal with increasing competitive pressure. However, the development of these complex systems also presents enterprises, especially SMEs, with challenges. In order to identify the challenges in the development of smart PSS and requests for corresponding support, a multi-method study was conducted with eighteen participants from German SMEs.

The Role of Servitization and Smart Product-Service Systems in the Industry

In the current decade of digitalisation, industries are focusing on product customers and its services to please customers with better performance and security and fulfilling their commitment to make the market smart as well as its customers. In that case, this study has aimed to investigate the servitization and smart product-service systems influence in the industries by using information and communication technologies (ICT), Cyber-Physical System (CPS), smart connected product (SCP) and Internet-of-Things (IoT). The study finds out that, servitization transforms the traditional business model into the digital or online business model and helps the customers to link with the technology. It also provides benefits and profits to the manufacturers of the industries, has been proved from the overall study that was the main curiosity point of the researcher behind choosing the topic. Hence, the discussion has added a value creation feature to the whole study while aiming and discussing the most relevant factors of servitization.

Comprehensive understanding of smart product service system from multi-dimension and multi-perspective: An innovative service model for Customer-product Interaction Life Cycle (CILC)

With the improvement of living standards and the rapid development of the Internet, customers gradually pursue personalized smart products and services. Traditional smart product service system is mainly aimed at the service of customers and products in one or several interactive links. Furthermore, in the mass personalization model, in order to give full play to the customer experience and participation satisfaction, it is necessary to study the smart product service system based on the interaction between customers and products. However, there is a gap in the research on integrating the whole life cycle of customer-product interaction. In order to meet this industrial need, the innovation of this paper is to construct an innovative service model for Customer-product Interaction Life Cycle (CILC) and analyse the service impact factors and countermeasures using fuzzy DEMATEL method. The study can provide enterprises with the top-level framework and decision-making of smart product service system based on CILC, and realize the effective integration, expansion and value-added of service resources. At the same time, the application of this research methods can shorten the distance between customers and products, improve customer satisfaction.

Industrial Internet Platform (IIP) enabled Smart Product Lifecycle-Service System (SPLSS) for manufacturing model transformation: From an industrial practice survey

Nowadays, the focus of enterprises is gradually expanding from product manufacturing system to Product service system (PSS). In the existing research, scholars mainly focus on the in-depth study of a certain method or technology, and the research on traditional PSS is relatively mature. In addition, it is a tendency that transform towards SPLSS with the characteristics of industrial internet platform (IIP) and sustainable operation theory. Based on this, this paper explores the research path from traditional product service system (PSS) to smart product service system (SPSS), and then to smart product lifecycle service system (SPLSS), which can endow the products with intelligent perception, intelligent analysis and intelligent decision-making capabilities based on Industrial Internet Platform (IIP). A reference model of IIP enabled SPLSS for industrial services based on system engineering method and theory from a very detailed practical investigation is proposed. Moreover, on the basis of this model, its three dimensional subsystems are expanded, including: supporting environment subsystem, evolution path subsystem, and added value subsystem. The study can provide a reference for the enterprise's manufacturing strategy and manufacturing path. It will promote the transformation and upgrading of enterprise manufacturing model to improve service efficiency and reduce operating costs, and then realize the value-added of products and services.

Configuration optimization of service solution for smart product service system under hybrid uncertain environments

Configuration of service solution is recognized as a crucial task for smart product service system (PSS) development, which provides an effective way to meet dynamic customer requirements. New smart attributes, broader stakeholder value and hybrid uncertainty occur inherently in the service solution configuration for smart PSS. These emerging characteristics lead to urgent updating need of the existing approaches to service solution configuration optimization. Therefore, the current study proposes a systematic approach to optimization of smart product service (SPS) solution configuration, aiming to achieve the best smart capability and value symbiosis among stakeholders of the configured SPS schemes. In the proposed approach, a new attributes system is proposed to describe the smart service module instances, and then employed as criteria to determine the configuration parameters. A novel rough-fuzzy data envelopment analysis (DEA) method is proposed to obtain the configuration parameters of each service module, with objective of effectively handling the hybrid uncertainties involved in the configuration environments. In addition, a bi-objective optimization model for SPS solution configuration considering smart capability efficiency and value symbiosis efficiency is proposed, and it is solved by an adaptive non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (ANSGA-II) to acquire a Pareto set of optimized configuration solutions. Finally, an application of this systematic approach to smart vehicle service demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Capabilities of digital servitization: Evidence from the socio-technical systems theory

Driven by pressures for sustainable development and disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturing companies in the 21st century are affected by two intertwined trends: Industry 4.0 and servitization. Digital servitization, which represents the transition from providing products to offering smart product-service systems, is currently seen as a black box by companies confronting them with major challenges. Current literature has not yet investigated which capabilities are required for the development and provision of smart PSSs. To address this gap, an exploratory multiple case study was performed using semi-structured interviews with 18 representatives of four manufacturing companies and six representatives of companies in a supporting role. A socio-technical systems perspective was adopted to cover the interconnectedness and complementarity of internal and external elements relevant for providing a smart PSS. The study identified 46 capabilities of digital servitization to offer and perform smart PSSs and systemically classified these within the dimensions of the socio-technical systems theory, thus providing companies with numerous insights into successful digital servitization. The results contribute to the practical and academic understanding of digital servitization by outlining capabilities to offer and perform smart PSSs and providing support for the use of socio-technical systems theory to frame these capabilities systematically.

The OMiLAB Digital Innovation environment: Agile conceptual models to bridge business value with Digital and Physical Twins for Product-Service Systems development

OMiLAB is a community of practice which offers a digital ecosystem bringing together open technologies to investigate and apply conceptual modeling methods for varying purposes and domains. One of the core value propositions is a dedicated Digital Innovation environment comprising several toolkits and workspaces, designed to support Product-Service Systems (PSS) prototyping – a key ingredient for PSS lifecycle management. At the core of this environment is a notion of Agile Digital Twin – a conceptual representation that can be tailored with knowledge engineering means to bridge the semantic and functional gap between a business perspective (focusing on value creation) and an engineering perspective (focusing on cyber-physical proofs-of-concept). To facilitate this bridging, the hereby proposed environment orchestrates, across three abstraction layers, methods such as Design Thinking, Agile Modeling Method Engineering and Model-driven Engineering to turn Ideation into smart Product-Service Systems experiments, in a laboratory setting. The proposed environment was built following Design Science principles. It addresses the problem of historically-disconnected skills required for Digital Innovation projects and it provides a testbed for feasibility experimentation. For design-oriented, artifact building research, a higher Technology Readiness Level can thus be achieved (compared to the level that idea development methods typically attain).

The relationships between digitalization and ecosystem-related capabilities for service innovation in agricultural machinery manufacturers

Manufacturers seeking to provide smart product-service systems require new sets of capabilities such as digitalization and ecosystem-related capabilities. Studies have investigated these capabilities separately, although it seems to have an unexplored convergence between them. Therefore, this article aims to identify the digitalization and ecosystem-related capabilities of manufacturers in the agricultural machinery industry that are seeking digital servitization and offering smart product-service systems. Moreover, it aims to uncover the relationships among these capabilities to determine their driving and dependence power. A combination of methods was employed to achieve this result. First, a systematic literature review was conducted to define key digitalization and ecosystem-related capabilities. Next, the Interpretive Structural Modelling and fuzzy MICMAC analysis were employed to define the capabilities’ driving power and dependence power. By combining these analyses, we propose a conceptual framework that integrates these two sets of capabilities, which is comprised of three macro-layers: driving, linkage, and dependent. This article contributes to the literature by showing the interrelationships between digitalization and ecosystem-related capabilities. Also, it proposes a conceptual framework that groups capabilities based on their contributions to the development of digital service innovation.

Smart already at design time – Pattern-based smart service innovation in manufacturing

Smart service innovation is the process of creating smart product-service systems (PSS) and novel data-driven service offerings. It is particularly challenging for manufacturing firms as they have to cope with the two transformational forces of digitalization and servitization at the same time, i.e., they have to both evaluate the potential of digital technologies for creating new business opportunities and overthink established business logics from transactional product sales towards relationship-oriented service and solution business. To support the early phases of corresponding innovation processes already at the design time of smart PSS, this article presents the Pattern-Based Smart Service Innovation (PBSSI) method. The method was developed following a design science research approach that involved a Delphi study for deriving value proposition patterns as one of its core elements and a multiple case study with manufacturing firms to demonstrate and evaluate the method’s utility for practitioners. The PBSSI method combines existing approaches to service design with newly developed and empirically grounded value proposition patterns for smart service. Evaluation feedback indicates that the PBSSI method is useful for online workshops and that it effectively supports the exploration and ideation in smart service innovation. In particular, it helps manufacturing firms to approach smart service innovation in a more customer-centric and systematic manner.

Data-driven value creation in Smart Product-Service System design: State-of-the-art and research directions

The emergence of IoT has propelled the traditionally known Product-Service System (PSS) to be characterized by smarter technologies, enabling them to collect and process data from the operational stage and facilitate communication between the customer and the provider. Commonly referred to as Smart Product-Service Systems (Smart PSS), these systems promise to create value at a personal level by collecting and effectively utilizing the operational data. However, one of the fundamental challenges is the lack of awareness as to what kind of data can be collected from the operational stage and what can be achieved from this data. This paper systematically reviews scientific literature to underline the kind of data being collected from the operational stage, the purposes being achieved from that data, and how they lead to value creation. The systematic review of 60 representative studies enabled the definition of the operational scenario that comprises 4 dimensions of data and 10 classes of data within these dimensions to generically identify what kind of data is being collected. The intend presented by various authors led to the generalization of 5 themes that target different purposes of collecting data. Further, the papers were classified with regards to functional or non-functional requirements to see how data in different approaches are leveraged for value creation. Finally, the discussion highlights the current gaps in the literature and raises several opportunities for future contributions.

A machine learning-based iterative design approach to automate user satisfaction degree prediction in smart product-service system

As an emerging digital servitization paradigm, smart product-service system (Smart PSS) leverages smart, connected products and their generated services to work as a solution bundle to improve individual user satisfaction. As a complex solution bundle at both system and product level, its iterative design differs from the existing ones mainly in two aspects. Firstly, massive in-context data during the usage stage can be leveraged to calculate the satisfaction degree of individual users intelligently. Secondly, Smart PSS, consisting of both digitalized service and physical components, can be changed in a more flexible way in a data-driven manner. An iterative design method for fast positioning and replacing the unsatisfied modules can improve the user experience and extend the Smart PSS usage life. Nevertheless, some studies made attempts, and it is still missing an iterative design method with automatic real-time user satisfaction prediction. Aiming to fill this gap, this work proposes a machine learning-based iterative design approach to automate user satisfaction prediction in the Smart PSS environment. Furthermore, an illustrative case study of a surgical robot for flexible ureteroscopy is demonstrated along with this proposed methodological framework, which overcomes the challenges of subjectivity and tedious assessment of the experts in the conventional approaches. This research can offer some valuable guidelines to today’s industrial companies in Smart PSS development.

Conceptualizing customer value in data-driven services and smart PSS

In the age of the industrial internet, manufacturers of industrial equipment compete through the offering of digital product-service solutions. These are built integrating smart connected products (SCP) and data-driven services, such as remote control, data analytics, diagnostic and predictive maintenance services. These services strongly influence the value created in the customer context and, consequently, the attractiveness of the integrated offering. A great issue remains about how these services should be designed by manufacturers of industrial equipment. Through integrative literature review over multiple domains, this paper provides a conceptual model that shows: i) which benefits can be created from smart product-service systems offerings at both business and individual level, in the customer organization; ii) how these benefits are linked to the choices about design and delivery of data-driven services. In respect to the second point, this study merges service science theory and data management to show how the data autonomously collected by SCP can be transformed into insights that deliver value, as far as the customer and the supplier interact, share resources and apply their specialized competences. Applying these concepts, we elaborate four exemplary archetypes of data-driven services that differ in respect to the kind of customer-supplier interactions along this data life cycle, bringing these options to different kind of customer value co-creation. Linking the mechanisms of value co-creation to design options of data-driven services, this paper has therefore notably implications for the research on servitization and smart product-service systems.

Towards Ecosystems with Smart Product-Service Systems

Product-service systems offer a hybrid value proposition consisting of product and service solutions. Upgrading traditional product-service systems to smart product-service systems by incorporating individuality and flexibility via data exchange into the value proposition enables addressing a variety of needs of a variety of stakeholders. With the use of the Internet of Everything and platform technology, ecosystems can systematically be designed around smart product-service systems. In this paper we demonstrate how a novel design architecture for smart product-service systems transitions customer needs via platform technology into platform-based product-service ecosystems. Furthermore, the definition of a platform-based product-service ecosystem is provided along with the distinction to platforms and platform software. The paper focuses on the conceptual design of platform-based product-service ecosystems and therefore incorporates requirements engineering and -management as well as the design architecture of the ecosystem. The conceptual design is implemented using a configurable drone with multiple sensors and actuators as the smart product-service system. The data of the drone is refined into information and further into knowledge and is shared with multiple stakeholders such as OEM, private user, third parties, suppliers, shipping companies, insurance providers. Cumulocity IoT of Software AG is used to connect the stakeholders to the smart product-service system enabling the demonstration of the value proposition towards all stakeholders within the ecosystem and also towards the ecosystem-specific mechanics, that allow autonomous growth.

A Maturity Model for Smart Product-Service Systems

Smart Product-Service Systems (sPSS) offer the opportunity to create additional value by combining smart products with smart services. However, industry players often lack resources, know-how, and practical guidance to develop, introduce, and maintain such complex solutions. To support their innovation efforts, research first needs to understand the implications of applying these emerging technologies. Hence, we present a maturity model for sPSS to describe and compare such solutions using twelve dimensions and conduct a case study to illustrate the model. Our research combines insights from a systematic literature review, 20 real-world use cases, seven interviews with sPSS experts, and a focus group.

A design method for an intelligent manufacturing and service system for rehabilitation assistive devices and special groups

The maturity of Industrial 4.0 technologies (smart wearable sensors, Internet of things [IoT], cloud computing, etc.) has facilitated the iteration and digitization of rehabilitation assistive devices (RADs) and the innovative development of intelligent manufacturing systems of RADs, expanding the value-added component of smart healthcare services. The intelligent manufacturing service mode, based on the concept of the product life cycle, completes the multi-source data production process analysis and the optimization of manufacturing, operation, and maintenance through intelligent industrial Internet of things and other means and improves the product life cycle management and operation mechanism. The smart product-service system (PSS) realizes the value-added of products by providing users with personalized products and value-added services, service efficiency, and sustainable development and gradually forms an Internet-product-service ecosystem. However, research on the PSS of RADs for special populations is relatively limited. Thus, this paper provides an overview of an IoT-based production model for RADs and a smart PSS-based development method of multimodal healthcare value-added services for special people. Taking the hand rehabilitation training devices for autistic children as a case, this paper verifies the effectiveness and availability of the proposed method. Compared with the traditional framework, the method used in this paper primarily helps evaluate rehabilitation efficacy, personalizes schemes for patients, provides auxiliary intelligent manufacturing service data and digital rehabilitation data for RAD manufacturers, and optimizes the product iteration development procedures by combining user-centered product interaction, multimodal evaluation, and value-added design. This study incorporates the iterative design of RADs into the process of smart PSS to provide some guidance to the RADs design manufacturers.

An integrated framework of user experience-oriented smart service requirement analysis for smart product service system development

The rapid deployment of digital technologies drives the conventional product service system (PSS) to shift into a new paradigm known as smart PSS. Empowered with smart capabilities, smart PSS has great potential in creating positive user experience (UX). The requirements analysis is an essential task for successful development of smart PSS with strong UX. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of research on the requirement analysis of smart PSS by incorporating smart-enabled UX perspective. Hence, this paper proposes a framework of user experience-oriented smart service requirement (UXO-SSR) analysis for smart PSS development. At first, the relevant factors (e.g., user personas and activity journey) are integrated to conceptualize the UX in smart PSS context. Second, a four-phase model is proposed for identifying UXO-SSR, which can provide an effective tool for acquiring UX requirements of smart PSS from holistic perspective. Third, a novel asymmetric trapezium cloud-based uncertain linguistic BWM approach is developed to evaluate the priority of the identified UXO-SSRs. The approach can appropriately handle the hybrid uncertainties (i.e., hesitancy, fuzziness and randomness) of linguistic evaluation information, thereby improving the accuracy of evaluation results. Finally, a case study of smart sleep service system is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of the proposed framework.