Defining a PSS lifecycle management system: Main characteristics and architectural impacts

The global crisis and the fierce competition of emerging countries make companies struggling to stay ahead of competition. The number of companies that are enlarging their offer portfolio looking forward to new and increased sources of revenues is always increasing but the number of companies failing in successfully implementing servitization strategy is even more. One possible reason behind this is the lack of tools to support companies while dealing with services that by definition are characterized by high level of intangibility and perishability. In this context, the integration of product design in concurrent with the related service design is becoming very relevant in several industrial fields. This process is very customer-centered and lead to the development of a product-service specific methodology. Specially, lean design methodologies can be used to foster and improve the integrated product-service design process. Based on this premise, the paper presents the PSS Lean Design methodology developed in the DIVERSITY project and its relations and impact on the data and information management of a product-service lifecycle system. A description of relations and modules customization for the development and diffusion of a PSS lifecycle management system is provided in the paper for an extension also in other contexts.