1,720,987 research outputs found
Conceptualizing customer value in data-driven services and smart PSS
No full textIn the age of the industrial internet, manufacturers of industrial equipment compete through the offering of digital product-service solutions. These are built integrating smart connected products (SCP) and data-driven services, such as remote control, data analytics, diagnostic and predictive maintenance services. These services strongly influence the value created in the customer context and, consequently, the attractiveness of the integrated offering. A great issue remains about how these services should be designed by manufacturers of industrial equipment. Through integrative literature review over multiple domains, this paper provides a conceptual model that shows: i) which benefits can be created from smart product-service systems offerings at both business and individual level, in the customer organization; ii) how these benefits are linked to the choices about design and delivery of data-driven services. In respect to the second point, this study merges service science theory and data management to show how the data autonomously collected by SCP can be transformed into insights that deliver value, as far as the customer and the supplier interact, share resources and apply their specialized competences. Applying these concepts, we elaborate four exemplary archetypes of data-driven services that differ in respect to the kind of customer-supplier interactions along this data life cycle, bringing these options to different kind of customer value co-creation. Linking the mechanisms of value co-creation to design options of data-driven services, this paper has therefore notably implications for the research on servitization and smart product-service systems
Aligning product-service systems with environmental sustainability: Investigating the key role of revenue and pricing mechanisms
No full textProduct-Service Systems (PSS) have a potential to increase environmental sustainability, e.g. by extending product lifespan through multiple usage cycles or enhancing resource efficiency during the usage phase. However, the actual achievement of environmental benefits through PSS has been questioned, due to contradictions between business and sustainability logics. This paper advocates a stronger alignment between PSS and environmental sustainability, through the role of revenue models and pricing mechanisms, in order to move beyond environmental gains as mere "additional effects" of PSS. Based on a conceptual elaboration of the literature, the paper develops morphological boxes to link revenue and pricing mechanisms with environmental value drivers of different PSS types. It shows how diverse revenue and pricing mechanisms may misalign with environmental value drivers and suggests alignment criteria. It also explores innovative “pay-per-emission” revenue models and "emission-based" pricing mechanisms to achieve such an alignment. The proposed framework, presented as a morphological toolkit, includes a process model for practitioners and policymakers to assess the alignment of current and new PSS offerings with environmental drivers
Everything-as-a-Service in manufacturing: a literature analysis and a definition
No full textCurrently, several companies are progressively transitioning from an offering focused on products to providing services and solutions, a phenomenon known as servitization. Manufacturers address this transformation in order to face competition, meet the growing demand for a more flexible offering, minimize capital expenditure, and exploit the opportunities offered by digitalization. Thus, new business models which a focus on selling the usage or outcome of a product rather than the product itself are increasingly receiving attention, as they can give companies the possibility to establish long-term partnerships with customers by providing solutions on a continuous basis in return for recurring payments. In recent years, this approach has become popular, particularly in the management community, with the term "Everything-as-a-service" (XaaS). The concept of XaaS has its origin in the information technology domain but, given the context described above, its application is becoming today more and more relevant for manufacturing companies. Various declinations of the XaaS concept in manufacturing have emerged, generally linked to the sales object and the application sector (e.g. Equipment-as-a-service, Consumable-as service, Heat-as-a-Service, ...). Moreover, the literature on this topic appears very fragmented and scattered across several similar and well-established research domains, such as servitization, integrated solutions, and product-service systems. Thus, a clear and agreed definition of the term is still lacking today and the boundaries of application are also unclear. In order to fill these gaps, this paper provides a structured analysis of the literature, in order to: i) define the current state of art, ii) identify the key elements and characteristics and iii) provide a new comprehensive definition of the XaaS paradigm in manufacturing
Assessing customer centricity: a new framework for manufacturing companies
No full textAs a direct result of the changeable market conditions, manufacturing companies are currently shifting
their focus from goods to services. Given this process of servitization, customer’s needs and preferences are
becoming more and more relevant for companies. In this context, it becomes strategic and essential for companies
to adopt a customer centricity approach: a strategy that puts customer needs at the center of all business processes
and decisions. This paper aims to develop a new framework that identifies the elements characterizing the customer
centricity paradigm in manufacturing companies and supports companies in the evaluation of the customer
orientation level. Moreover, by applying the new framework in practice, this paper also discusses how it can helps
manufacturing companies in designing a structured customer centricity paradigm and in consistently identifying the
actions needed to implement it
A Design for X framework for PSS business models
No full textManufacturing companies are moving from product-centric offerings to services and solutions in order to
increase revenues and build sustainable competitive advantage. This strategy is generally achieved through the
provision of a product–service system (PSS) that may be considered as the combination of tangible products with a
series of related intangible services in order to meet specific customer needs’. Therefore, the material products need
to be characterized by specific design features in order to make more efficient and effective the provision of the
product-related services. Moreover, the adoption of a product-service-system (PSS) business model necessitates an
accurate attention on all the phases of the product life-cycle. According to this line of thought, concurrent
engineering approach and, in particular, the adoption of design-for-x (DfX) techniques can represent an effective
instrument to decrease maintenance cost, facilitate reuse and extent product life-cycle in order to effectively provide
a PSS. The literature acknowledges the likely impacts of DfX approach in the implementation of PSS. However, the
relationships between DfX types with the different PSS types as well as the DfX operational levers that
manufacturing companies can implement based on the envisaged DfX type adopted still remain largely an uncharted
territory. In order to fill this gap, this paper proposes a new literature-based DfX typology encompassing the suitable
DfX types to be considered when implementing a PSS business model. The evaluation of the potential impacts of
each DfX type on different configurations of PSS business models has been also investigated. This paper also
presents a toolkit aimed at helping practitioners at identifying and evaluating practical actions to be taken in order to
improve the product design according to the configuration of the envisaged PSS business model (BM) configuratio
The competences for digital servitization: a survey on Italian based firms
No full textToday’s world is changing faster than ever before. Recent research argues that digitalization offers a series
of opportunities for companies, enabling servitization. The convergence of digitalization and servitization, namely
digital servitization, is reshaping the working environment, guiding companies to develop new competences for
workers. While this phenomenon is proving increasingly popular, there is limited specifications or empirical
investigations that focus on the extent to which it is being adopted in practice. This research gap is addressed by
exploring these competences on a conceptual and empirical basis using a structured framework. This article reports
the results from a survey of 141 companies based in the Italian region, seeking to empirically investigate the
competences that support digital servitization. The results show that although there is an increasing interest in
practice by companies that are trying to fill in the gap between the competences’ importance and presence,
supportive literature is rather limited. Finally, we identified the most critical competences for the examined sample,
which are problem solving, data analysis and team working
Understanding Data-Driven Product Service System characteristics: a conceptual framework for manufacturing applications
No full textThe explosion of digital technologies and data analytics capabilities are leading companies to rethink they offers and expand more than ever their business into the service domain. Specifically, considering manufacturers, the emerging possibility to connect products and create IoT architectures at the customer side, enable them to retrieve data flows during the products’ lifecycle. Analyze those data opened opportunities to obtain information to use intra-organization and at the same time to enhance already existing service or to develop new ones. Even the potential of data availability in this context is recognized in the literature, further work is still needed, especially defining how these new data-driven offers should be engineered and structured. In this view, this study provides a comprehensive interpretation on the general key components and characteristics of those services, defined as Data-Driven Product Service Systems (DDPSS), aiming at supporting the comprehension of specific principles and consequently the systematic creation of DDPSS. Indeed, limited research is devoted to the definition of the unique characteristics of those services and common agreement is still missing. The paper developed a two-hierarchical conceptual framework describing DDPSS typologies is proposed. The framework value is twofold: first it categories and harmonizes service typologies into a structured model and second, it can be used as a support tool during the service design phase, since it can inspire and guide service development. In the end, the paper also presents an explorative application of the conceptual framework within a different manufacturing company. The applications show both the descriptive and the prescriptive nature of the model; indeed, it is used to analyses the current position and to propose new trajectories for the companies’ service offering
Competences in digital servitization: a new framework
No full textThis paper contributes to the research on servitization in manufacturing companies. Its main purpose is to
describe and explain how the evolving technological landscape is influencing the skills that companies seek for
facilitating the service growth. Grounded on the actual knowledge on this topic, this study presents some
preliminary findings from an on-going research, that focus on the impacts of digital transformation on
competences and capabilities of manufacturers. To this concern, this paper is also part of the broader set of
studies on the forth industrial revolution (I4.0), and on the changes to organization of manufacturing firms due to
the raise of digital business and smart products, smart services, smart workplace, etc. The main contributions of
this research are twofold: first we propose a theoretical framework that - based on the review of the existing
literature – sheds lights on the trends of “digital servitization”. Second, we explore the competences that support
the digital servitization (i.e. “digital competences”). To achieve this latter objective, we carried out interviews
with CEOs, HR and service managers of companies undergoing servitization and digital transformation. This
study also provides avenues for further research dealing with competences for the I4.0 revolution
An exploratory survey on the impacts of Logistics 4.0 on Italian manufacturing companies
No full textThis article focuses on manufacturing logistics, exploring how Italian companies are approaching Logistics 4.0. The purpose is to evaluate the state of the art of technology adoption, highlighting the main influencing factors, and showing the related benefits and obstacles. An exploratory survey was carried out on 91 Italian manufacturing companies. The significance of the influence of the factors analysed regarding the level of adoption of L4.0 has been demonstrated. The study also included eight interviews with survey respondents undertaken to validate the main insights from the survey results. The overall results indicate that the adoption of Logistics 4.0 is still immature but has huge potential. Moreover, the few companies adopting at least one technology have sought benefits related mainly to warehouse activities and efficiency in process operations. The awareness that L4.0 intends a harmonious and integrated implementation of digital technologies to support logistics processes has not yet become widespread
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