Process Characteristics of Product-Service Systems Development: Comparison of Seven Manufacturing Company Cases

Abstract The process to develop a product-service system (PSS) from a product of a manufacturing company could take many different routes reflecting various properties of the manufacturing firm and its business contexts. This paper describes a method to represent PSS development processes using service blueprints. PSS development activities of various stakeholders, including servitization experts, manufacturing company people, customers and other collaborators, are described with their progress sequence and relations. To support understanding and comparison of different PSS development cases, simple measures for process characteristics have also been devised. Seven PSS development cases for various kinds of manufacturing companies are compared from the process perspectives obtained from the proposed representation so that the utilities of the proposed representation are illustrated.