Methodical Approach for Detailed Planning of Services to offer Product Service Systems

Abstract

The transformation of current business models towards offering product service systems (PSS) provides manufacturing companies numerous opportunities to consolidate or even expand their competitive position. Companies are confronted with the challenge of successfully designing this transformation process simultaneously. In order to approach the development of new business models and the transformation process, business model patterns and best practices provide a good first orientation for companies. However, these are designed to be industry-neutral and rather abstract when considering the actual processes. Thus, they do not offer any individual support to companies in the specific development of a business model and its required service delivery processes. Service delivery processes are part of a business model and describe activities that take place to provide services. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular do not have the necessary time, technical and methodological resources to manage a transfer from abstract business model examples to an individual business model. This barrier often leads SME to remain with their traditional business model. Therefore, this paper presents a methodology for the detailed planning of service delivery processes. The designed methodology supports the phases design and implementation, which are part of the business model development. The methodology describes a structured procedure, in which relevant services first have to be identified. These services are then broken down into individual process modules on a second level. The modules are elements that can get combined to services. On a third level there are explicit process models. The process models are assigned to the modules and define the respective process steps and the requirements for the implementation. The approach is designed to support companies successfully transform to new business models for PSS by applying the detailed planning for services with specific modules that contain detailed process models and requirements.