Stakeholder engagement in early stage product-service system development for healthcare informatics

This paper presents the findings from four case studies on stakeholder engagement in new health information and communication technology (ICT) product-service system (PSS) development. The degree of connectivity between the new health ICT PSS and its intended operating environment has emerged to be an important contextual factor that may impact the decision of stakeholder engagement in the early stage development process. Along with the proposition of a four-level framework to guide stakeholder identification for new PSS development, three stakeholder engagement propositions that are based on the degree of connectivity are developed. Analysis has shown that there can be two types of connectivity: data and process. Moreover, each connectivity type can be characterized by how much the new PSS is connected with its environment: independent if there is no linkage, linked if it interfaces with, or incorporated if it is embedded into. Furthermore, depending upon whether and to what extent the PSS has data and process connectivity with its intended operating environment, the stakeholder engagement needs in early stage development vary. The propositions presented in this paper provide important directions for future work exploring PSS characterization and stakeholder engagement decision in early stage new PSS development in the healthcare industry. © 2013 PICMET.

Learning and concurrent engineering in the development of a high technology product/service system

This paper explores project management techniques that can support the development of novel product-service systems. Some observations from the development of an airborne earth properties measurement system are provided. The intellectual property and the data this system could potentially deliver was more important than the potential commercial value of the product itself. What was sought was a complete business service solution. A concurrent engineering approach was implemented linking both product development and survey data/analysis services. The blend of product and service was integrated using a function modeling technique. It was observed that the implementation of some functions required radical innovation whilst others could be implemented through incremental improvements to current practice. It is suggested in the paper that adapting production learning curve concepts that reflect the relative degrees of uncertainty involved in individual subsystems can enhance project management forecasting practice © 2013 The Authors and IOS Press.

The move to servitization (from a product service system point of view)

Product Service Systems (PSSs) emphasize the substitution of products with services. The term “Servitisation” was introduced by Sandra Vendermerwe in the 80s to represent the addition of services to increase a company’s competitive edge. Key to PSS, and Servitisation more generally, is the “informated product”. The informated product enables health monitoring of the product in use and can be key to a workable PSS. This paper reviews the evolution of servitisation and the associated business benefit. It also then reviews the concept of informated product reconfiguration techniques and remote services that enables PSS to be delivered.

Defining product-service network configurations and location roles: A current and future state analysis framework for international engineering operations

Many manufacturing firms have developed a service dimension to their product portfolio. In response to this growing trend of servitisation, organisations, often involved in complex, long-lifecycle product-service system (PSS) provision, need to reconfigure their global engineering networks to support integrated PSS offerings. Drawing on parallel concepts in 'production' networks, the idea of 'location role' now becomes increasingly complex, in terms of service delivery. As new markets develop, locations in a specific region may need to grow/adapt engineering service 'competencies' along the value chain, from design and build to support and service, in order to serve future location-specific requirements and, potentially, those requirements of the overall network. The purpose of this paper is to advance understanding of how best to design complex multi-organisational engineering service networks, through extension of the 'production' network location role concept to a PSS context, capturing both traditional engineering 'design and build' and engineering 'service' requirements. Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Challenges of product-service systems:a real-life case study

A Product-Service System (PSS) is an integrated product and service offering that delivers value in use. This paper presents a real-life case study of a large company which has moved towards PSS. A research protocol has been created to conduct an extensive series of interviews with key personnel within the case study company. The results of the study and implications for research are explored.

State-of-the-art in product-service systems

A Product-Service System (PSS) is an integrated combination of products and services. This Western concept embraces a service-led competitive strategy, environmental sustainability, and the basis to differentiate from competitors who simply offer lower priced products. This paper aims to report the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature is classified and the major outcomes of each study are addressed and analysed. On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features, gives examples of applications along with potential benefits and barriers to adoption, summarizes available tools and methodologies, and identifies future research challenges.

Product-service systems revisited

There is a growing interest around the potential value of service-led competitive strategies to UK based manufacturers. A Product Service-System (PSS) is one form of such a strategy and is based on integrated combination of products and services. This concept also embraces environmental sustainability. This paper aims to summarise the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature search is described and the major outcomes of the study are presented. On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features.

Challenges and Opportunities in Transforming Laser System Industry to Deliver Integrated Product and Service Offers

Part 4: Transition Towards Product-Service Systems

Influencing factors of successful transitions towards product-service systems: A simulation approach

Product-Service Systems (PSS) are new business strategies moving and extending the product value towards its functional usage and related required services. From a theoretical point of view the PSS concept is known since a decade and many Authors reported reasonable possible success factors: higher profits over the entire life-cycle, diminished environmental burden, and localization of required services. Nevertheless the PSS promises remain quantitatively unproven relaying on a simple theory that involves a few constructs with some empirical grounding, but that is limited by weak conceptualization, few propositions, and/or rough underlying theoretical logic. A plausible interpretation to analyze the possible evolution of a PSS strategy could be considering it as a new business proposition competing on a traditional Product-Oriented (PO) market, assumed at its own equilibrium state at a given time. The analysis of the dynamics associated to a possible transition from a traditional PO to a PSS strategy allows investigating the main parameters and variables influencing an eventual successful adoption. This research is worthwhile because organizations undergoing fundamental PSS strategy are concerned about change and inertia key processes which, despite equilibrium theory and because of negative feedback loops, could undermine, economically, the return of their PSS proposition. In this paper Authors propose a qualitative System Dynamics (SD) approach by considering the PSS as a perturbation of an existing PO market featured by a set of known parameters. The proposed model incorporates several PSS factors able to influence the success of a PSS proposition under a set of given and justified assumptions, attempting to place this business strategy in a dynamic framework.

A life cycle model for product-service systems design

Western manufacturing companies are developing innovative ways of delivering value that competes with the low cost paradigm. One such strategy is to deliver not only products, but systems that are closely aligned with the customer value proposition. These systems are comprised of integrated products and services, and are referred to as Product-Service Systems (PSS). A key challenge in PSS is supporting the design activity. In one sense, PSS design is a further extension of concurrent engineering that requires front-end input from the additional downstream sources of product service and maintenance. However, simply developing products and service packages is not sufficient: the new design challenge is the integrated system. This paper describes the development of a PSS data structure that can support this integrated design activity. The data structure is implemented in a knowledge base using the Protégé knowledge base editor.

Risky strategic behaviour : unintended consequences of good intentions in the homelessness service system

The delivery of human services occurs through a complex and often volatile system characterised by both competing and cooperating efforts. A recent strategic intention of government has been to integrate disparate service providers and programs into a more effective and efficient system using competitive funding regimes. A program of amalgamation has also been forecast and promoted as a further mechanism by which to link up smaller agencies thus creating economy and efficiency in the scale and scope of their service modes. Despite the current reliance on competitive funding models and amalgamation as the preferred ways forward for the sector little is known about their integrative capacity including their ability to predict outcomes and their consequences : the ‘unknown unknowns’. Drawing on an extensive data set of human services integration initiatives in Queensland, Australia, this paper examines the impact of government policy and service models and the risks arising from the tensions between competition and accountability on the one hand and the established good will and trust on the other. It is argued that unresolved, these tensions can lead to a weakening of the social infrastructure and make the system more vulnerable to inherent systemic risks. The paper finds that government’s efforts to externalise risk to the non-government sector leads to fragmentation of the service system and fractured collaborative capability. These unintended outcomes themselves have the unintended consequence of leaving governments disconnected from the service system and unable to provide the leadership role and direction necessary for sustained integration. Moreover, facilitating such a leadership role is undermined by behaviours that are directly contrary to collective integration models.

An ontology-based service discovery approach for the provisioning of product-service bundles

More and more traditional manufacturing companies form or join inter-organizational networks to bundle their physical products with related services to offer superior value propositions to their customers. Some of these product-related services can be digitized completely and thus fully delivered electronically. Other services require the physical integration of external factors, but can still be coordinated electronically. In both cases companies and consumers face the problem of discovering appropriate product-related service offerings in the network or market. Based on ideas from the web service discovery discipline we propose a meet-in-the-middle approach between heavy-weight semantic technologies and simple boolean search to address this issue. Our approach is able to consider semantic relations in service descriptions and queries and thus delivers better results than syntax-based search. However – unlike most semantic approaches – it does not require the use of any formal language for semantic markup and thus requires less resources and skills for both service providers and consumers. To fully realize the potentials of the proposed approach a domain ontology is needed. In this research-in-progress paper we construct such an ontology for the domain of product-service bundles through analysis and synthesis of related work on service description. This will serve as an anchor for future research to iteratively improve and evaluate the ontology through collaborative design efforts and practical application.