A unified representation scheme for effective PSS development

A method for designing service activity and product concurrently and collaboratively is proposed. Design of services and products should be integrated in order to maximize customers' value, considering the Mutual effects of synergy, alternative and complementarity. First, a fundamental unified representation scheme of human process and physical process in service activity is given. Second, the authors propose a method to evaluate these processes with Quality Function Deployment (QFD) manner, used widely in product design. In the rest of this paper, the authors describe a detailed process to represent unified scheme of human processes and physical processes by applying the proposed method to an actual service case. As a consequence, maximization of customer value by the proposed method can be expected. (C) 2009 CIRP.