Enabling Product-Service System Development Using Creative Workshops: Experience from Industry Cases

Paper in proceeding, 2012

Manufacturing industries are undergoing a transition from the manufacturing of products towards the integration of services and providing Product-Service Systems (PSS). When buying a new car today for example, you do not only get the hard product of a vehicle but you can receive several offers that enhances the value of the car such as software products, service deals, insurance packages and applications, making the car not only a product, but a product-service system. PSS delivers more customized solutions since it puts more focus on the use and functionality of the product, rather than the actual product itself. PSS can therefore be said to respond more appropriately to the demands of today than existing systems of mass production. To deliver solutions rather than products changes the perspective within product development since it is the function of the product that is sold rather than the technical dimensions of it. The product is delivered in a package together with software and services, which also needs to be considered during the development of the product. In the aerospace industry the increasing service integration can be exemplified with TotalCare® offers by Rolls Royce, where airlines pay for services in a package together with the product. There is an extended value in offering commitment and availability compared to the sale and purchase of a traditional product. However, the industry still focuses on the traditional product concepts where e.g. lifecycle services such as supply of spare parts, repairs and maintenance are additional. The aim with this research is to support the transition towards development of PSS in industry. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to contribute to understanding of the challenges companies face in such transition, and to test methods that could support the teams responsible for developing PSS. Creative workshops are an example of such a methodology and therefore the research question for this paper is: How can PSS development be supported by creative workshop methods? In this paper a number of creative methods were selected for testing since they were found to respond to the challenges of developing PSS. The selected methods have then been tested in two actual industrial cases, with teams working on PSS issues at present. The first case is a business-to-business (B2B) company in the aerospace industry and the second is a business-to-consumer (B2C) company in the automotive industry.