Addressing product-service manufacturing in globalised markets: an industrial case study

Product-service (P-S) represents an interesting business trend for manufacturing enterprises to push innovation since it allows increasing the value perceived by the customers and better satisfying their needs over time by adding a wide range of services to a physical product. In this context understanding how to configure the global design and production network in order to realize a P-S solution and properly reconfigure the processes against rapidly changing of P-S requirements is a complex problem area. For this purpose new methods are necessary to deal with the complex, dynamic and transient nature of product- services and create a dynamic global network able to effectively manage the flexible design and production requirements demanded by the increasing business need for rapid P-S change. The research presents an industrial case study focusing on a manufacturing company facing the configuration of its production network in order to provide a new P-S idea and innovate its actual product portfolio. In particular, the study defines a methodology to elicit the P-S network configuration requirements and support the P-S introduction in a traditional manufacturing scenario. By using such a method the company is able to define a solution to plan and configure the required network in case of P-S production and organize the partners and the interactions among them.