Smart Product-Service Systems

The rapid development of information and communication technologies, artificial intelligence and digital technologies have largely empowered today’s industries towards the so-called digital servitization era. Accordingly, a promising IT-driven business paradigm, i.e. Smart Product-Service Systems (Smart PSS) was brought up, of which a large amount of low cost, high performance smart, connected products are leveraged, together with their generated on-demand services, as a single solution bundle to meet individual customer needs.

Smart PSS reshapes the product-service design in several unique aspects, including a closed-loop forward and reverse design manner (Hybrid Design), design with integrated human-machine intelligence (Hybrid Intelligence), and context-aware value co-creation (Hybrid Value). In Smart PSS context, unlike conventional design process starts from the very beginning of lifecycle, design innovation can be regarded as a value generation process by considering the whole product-service lifecycle, including value co-creation at the early development stage, value implementation in the manufacturing process, and value recreation in the usage stage. It follows Design for X principles with extended lifecycle and sustainability concerns, while conducted in a smart, connected environment by embracing disruptive ICT and AI techniques.

Figure An overview of Smart PSS paradigm.