Technical-business design methodology for PSS

Concurrent Design (CD) is a systematic approach to integrated product design that emphasizes the response to customer expectations and the combination of creativity and engineering. Such a concept represents also the basis of Product- Service System (PSS), which represents a valid way for companies to add value to their products, create new value propositions, and easily improve their solution portfolio. Indeed, the fulfilling of the customer needs is fundamental for creating successful industrial PSSs (IPSSs), which aim at combining products and services into a marketable solution. However, the integration of technical and business aspects is crucial to succeed. In this context, this paper proposes an integrated methodology for PSS addressing both technical and business aspects; it adopts a QFD-based approach to structure PSS information along the different process stages, considering four main domains: customer, functional, assets and network. It allows technical feasibility to be carried out and business framework to be defined at the same time to have a robust design concept and a reliable business model from the early design stages. The method is based on the direct involvement of the customer voice according to the CD paradigm. The proposed method also allows to define earlier the network of stakeholders and to dynamically reconfigure the network itself along the process, promoting the creation of the lean enterprise

a tco model for supporting the configuration of industrial plants

Abstract In the current industrial context, where processes are extremely flexible to meet the changes of the market demand, the traditional strategies for managing the design and investment of industrial assets are too restrictive. Indeed, such strategies just consider the procurement price of an asset rather than its lifecycle cost. In this framework, the paper proposes a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model that can be adopted in B2B context for establishing the best asset configuration and procurement strategy by considering its CAPEX and OPEX. Such a TCO model has been implemented into an Enterprise Application Software for supporting the TCO evaluation. The presented model and software tool have been applied within an Italian food company for supporting the assets investment management

from pss to cps design a real industrial use case toward industry 4 0

Abstract During the last 10 years, manufacturing companies have faced new challenges for improving their value proposition and being more efficient and effective on the market, satisfying the customer needs. According to this trend, several technologies have been developed and applied in different sectors and with different aims, in order to support such the companies in their reconfiguration. For example, the recent advances in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) could give also to manufacturing industries the competences required to develop novel sustainable products embedded with a dedicated infrastructure able to provide more service functionalities to customer. In this context, the application of Internet of Things (IoT) have allowed developing the so named Product Service Systems (PSSs). Moreover, the cross-fertilization between such the technologies with the development of other ones have fostered the application of these novel ICT technologies inside the manufacturing companies also at process level. This approach has encouraged the study and development of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs). The present paper deals with a real industrial use case, where the application of ICT technologies and specifically the adoption of IoT at a plant of plastic extrusion pipes have allowed optimizing the production process in terms of energy efficiency

Driving Process Innovation: A Structured Method for Improving Efficiency in SMEs☆

Abstract This paper proposes a method to drive process innovation toward the increase in efficiency of a production plant. The work defines a structured method, supported by a classification tool, to correctly organize whole plant information with a mayor focus on energy consumptions. The method was tested in a medium enterprise with the target to increase the efficiency of the entire production plant. The method is the basis for a web application tool. A correct data management permits to plan the best practices to improve processes and systems involved in terms of environmental and economic impacts, meaning a process sustainable innovation

Open Innovation for Ideating and Designing New Product Service Systems

Abstract For modern manufacturing companies, the combination of physical products and intangible services (called Product-Service Systems or PSS) has been proved by time to be useful to enhance the product features by adding value throughout new functionalities, and bringing competitive advantages in a specific target market. Through PSS, companies create new business opportunities, extend the market share, differentiate the product portfolio, and improve sustainability. The PSS approach shifts the company attention from producing physical products to offering integrated systems. However, ideating and designing a PSS is a complex and multifaceted process, which requires multiple competences and cross-functions cooperation within the manufacturing company. In fact, the design phase requires to simultaneous dal with the characteristics of the physical product and of the intangible services, the last ones being by their nature fuzzy and difficult to define. Furthermore, the two entities have to be synergistically delivered and strategically managed thanks to the adoption of a PSS lifecycle management methodology and tools, in particular for the creation of a proper PSS infrastructure to delivery and maintain all the components from the design to the end of life phases. Several methodologies to design PSS can be found in literature. Most of them focus on technical development stages, while some of them face also the innovation aspects and sustainability. However, traditional product-centered approaches are not able to fully support the processes that manufacturing companies have to put in place for creating PSSs. This paper presents a new approach, based on the combination of the Open innovation method with IT solutions supporting information sharing and intra-team cooperation, in that any manufacturing company could adopt to manage the design process of a PSS. In particular, the methodology and the tools are focused on the early stages of the PSS design process, as Ideation and Concept definition that have been developed within the European FP7 project FLEXINET

A reference ontology approach to support global product-service production

The need to innovate and compete drives organisations to constantly seek new approaches to facilitate business and commerce. As market places become ever more globalised and digital economies grow, these organisations rely more heavily upon systems to design and deliver their products and services. Hence, when developing and operating a global production network the need for systems to interoperate between different domains and contexts within a global production network becomes paramount if organisations are to succeed. This paper puts forwards a reference ontology that has been developed to enable the interoperation of software tools involved in the global production of new product-services systems (PSS). It sets out the levels of the reference ontology, detailing closely the product-service aspects. This has been developed using a formal logic based approach. An example knowledge base has been created from industrial end user information with queries applied to this to provide a set of results showing the ability of the reference ontology

Study and development of a methodology for Product-Service System engineering

Il presente lavoro di tesi si inserisce all’interno della tematica del Product-Service System (PSS) e si pone l’obiettivo di investigare il contesto attuale, sia in termini di avanzamento nella ricerca, che per quanto concerne lo sviluppo di metodi e strumenti da applicare in campo industriale, in modo da cogliere le principali criticità del mondo manifatturiero ed individuare le principali sfide da superare. Il concetto di Product-Service System si basa sull’integrazione di prodotti e servizi con l’obiettivo di estendere il ciclo di vita del prodotto stesso, creando un nuovo valore aggiunto per il consumatore. Attualmente tale integrazione è possibile grazie allo sviluppo di una serie di nuove tecnologie (e.g. IoT), che attraverso la connettività dei prodotti permettono la connessione tra un prodotto fisico ed un sistema software in grado di gestire ed erogare differenti funzionalità (servizio intangibile), le quali rappresentano il vero valore aggiunto per il consumatore finale. L’approccio al PSS in campo industriale, teorizzato in letteratura come processo di Servitizzazione [Thoben et al. 2001], il quale si compone di quattro fasi ben distinte che rappresentano i vari stadi sequenziali a cui le aziende product-oriented possono approcciare, è sintomatico di un cambiamento in termini di business model, in cui la canonica curva di ciclo vita di prodotto (Introduzione, Crescita, Maturità, Declino) viene ad essere stravolta. Il presente lavoro di tesi mira a proporre e sviluppare una metodologia di progettazione del PSS incentrata sull’analisi dei bisogni dei consumatori, aspetto centrale nel passaggio da una progettazione product-oriented ad una service-oriented. Tale metodologia si avvale dell’approccio QFD e permette la contemporanea definizione del corrispondente business model. Tale metodologia è stata applicata in un caso studio reale presso l’azienda Indesit company, con lo scopo di validare e testare la stessa.This research thesis faces the Product-Service System (PSS) topic with the aim to investigate the current literature context, both to understand its current status and to analyse the main methods and tools developed to support the PSS in manufacturing. The results derived have been used to identify the current criticalities of such the existed methods and to identify the main challenges to address. The PSS concept is based on the integration of products and services with the aim to extend the current product lifecycle, generating a benefit for the customer. This integration is currently allowed also thanks to the development of a set of new technologies (e.g. IoT), which through the product connection make possible the link between a physical item and a system able to deliver several service functionalities (intangible items) that are the real benefit for customer. The manufacturing approaching to PSS has been defined in literature as Servitization process [Thoben et al. 2001] and it involves four main stages that are the different steps that product-oriented companies can address. The Servitization process establishes a transformation in terms of business model, where the common lifecycle trend has been changed. The present research thesis aims to define and develop a methodology to design a PSS solution, based on the user centred design (UCD) approach, which is one of the main challenge in moving from product-oriented to service-oriented design. Such the methodology uses the QFD approach, and allows the concurrently technical and business analyses. Such the methodology has been applied to a case study at Indesit Company, in order to test its validity

Studio e sviluppo di una metodologia per la progettazione di Sistemi Prodotto-Servizio

Il presente lavoro di tesi si inserisce all’interno della tematica del Product-Service System (PSS) e si pone l’obiettivo di investigare il contesto attuale, sia in termini di avanzamento nella ricerca, che per quanto concerne lo sviluppo di metodi e strumenti da applicare in campo industriale, in modo da cogliere le principali criticità del mondo manifatturiero ed individuare le principali sfide da superare. Il concetto di Product-Service System si basa sull’integrazione di prodotti e servizi con l’obiettivo di estendere il ciclo di vita del prodotto stesso, creando un nuovo valore aggiunto per il consumatore. Attualmente tale integrazione è possibile grazie allo sviluppo di una serie di nuove tecnologie (e.g. IoT), che attraverso la connettività dei prodotti permettono la connessione tra un prodotto fisico ed un sistema software in grado di gestire ed erogare differenti funzionalità (servizio intangibile), le quali rappresentano il vero valore aggiunto per il consumatore finale. L’approccio al PSS in campo industriale, teorizzato in letteratura come processo di Servitizzazione [Thoben et al. 2001], il quale si compone di quattro fasi ben distinte che rappresentano i vari stadi sequenziali a cui le aziende product-oriented possono approcciare, è sintomatico di un cambiamento in termini di business model, in cui la canonica curva di ciclo vita di prodotto (Introduzione, Crescita, Maturità, Declino) viene ad essere stravolta. Il presente lavoro di tesi mira a proporre e sviluppare una metodologia di progettazione del PSS incentrata sull’analisi dei bisogni dei consumatori, aspetto centrale nel passaggio da una progettazione product-oriented ad una service-oriented. Tale metodologia si avvale dell’approccio QFD e permette la contemporanea definizione del corrispondente business model. Tale metodologia è stata applicata in un caso studio reale presso l’azienda Indesit company, con lo scopo di validare e testare la stessa

Design for sustainability in PSS: evidences of QFD-based method application

Nowadays companies are pushed to offer solutions with new functionalities, higher performances, lower environmental impact, lower cost, and high usability for final users. In this context, the concept of Product-Service System (PSS) represents a valid way from manufacturing firms to evolve their market proposition, reduce impacts of their processes, and satisfy the customers’ needs. However, the design of PSS is still difficult, due to the lack of structured methodologies and evidences of the benefits connected with their adoption. The research adopts a systematic QFD-based methodology and demonstrates its validity to develop high sustainability PSS solutions. The case study focuses on the definition of a new PSS for green roofs: two groups of students, using respectively traditional methods and the proposed QFD-based methodology, were involved. The two PSSs conceived were evaluated in terms of outputs supporting the design phases and sustainability impacts. The case study results demonstrated how the adoption of a systematic method allows developing more business-oriented and more sustainable PSS in respect to traditional methods

User-centred approach for product-service design using virtual mock-ups

Product-Service System (PSS) allows creating new business opportunities for companies, but also new challenges. The research defines a user-centred design methodology for PSS, which includes user-centred practices to investigate the users’ needs and virtual prototyping to create immersive and interactive virtual mock-ups able to simulate the product-service behaviours for the evaluation of the user experience. An industrial case study is presented and the benefits in respect to traditional methods are demonstrated