Developing service oriented architectures for product-service systems - A conceptual approach and its application for the recycling of electronic equipment

Offering product-service bundles (consisting of products and services) is becoming more important for companies. Modifying the organizational structure of the cooperation as well as adapting to changing customer demands requires versatile information systems. Implementing Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) is one attempt to provide this flexibility. Currently, there is little methodical guidance for the identification, specification and implementation of services as building blocks of Service Oriented Architectures. Accounting for this need, a conceptual approach is designed, which adapts approaches of customer integration, and combines a business and IT analysis. The applicability of the method is demonstrated by designing a Service Oriented Architecture for the recycling of electronic equipment. Implementing services for other product-service bundles will support additional integration scenarios. By standardizing services, a sound integration of products and services can be backed by providing a reference architecture.