System Modelling and Analysis to Support Economic Assessment of Product-Service Systems

The evolution towards more customer-centric operations within manufacturing and service industries gave rise to novel ways of value creation and delivery such as Product-Service Systems (PSS). PSS integrate tangible and intangible elements to create new values for both customers and providers. Therefore, a close collaboration is required among various actors in a value network to co-create values towards win-win gains. For companies to keep up with this pace, new decision support tools are needed to accompany PSS engineering and to adjust business models. This need is confronted with the scarcity of PSS-oriented economic assessment models and methods. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for the economic assessment of PSS. The framework relies on a novel combination of system modelling and analysis approaches to enable cost and revenue attribution to different actors in a value network. The applicability and relevance of the framework are demonstrated through a case study in the industrial cleaning sector.

Automated summary

The evolution toward more customer-centric operations in manufacturing and service industries has led to the emergence of Product-Service Systems (PSS) as a novel way of value creation and delivery. Close collaboration among various actors in a value network is crucial for creating win-win gains. However, the lack of economic assessment models and methods specific to PSS poses a challenge.