An Integrated Method to Support PSS Design within the Virtual Enterprise

Nowadays Product-Service System (PSS) is a widespread trend consisting of adding services to the physical product in order to increase their market share, add value to their products, and create a new value proposition. Anyway, its application is still far from real industrial scenarios mainly due to difficulties in choosing the right partners, lack of collaboration among the partners, poor integration among the companies’ system platforms, and lack of knowledge about the available technologies. In such context, this paper presents an integrated methodology to support the PSS design process into a Virtual Enterprise (VE). It involves different stages, from idea management to global network definition. Furthermore, the business model items can be defined in parallel along the design process and benefit the design itself by supporting decision-making, according to a concurrent engineering approach.In order to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed approach, it has been applied to a real industrial use case represented by a Virtual Enterprise working in the field of household appliances. In particular, the method supported the PSS design by the definition of the PSS requirements and functions, as well as the selection of the global network partners. The as-is and to-be processes are described and compared. The use case represents a valid example of how a product-oriented manufacturing company can open its strategic vision creating a PSS Virtual Enterprise in a structured way.