The capacity to guide the evolution and creation of new products (manufactured goods or services) is crucial for the enterprise's profitability. Hence, enterprises have acquired the capacity to manage the future of their product portfolio. However, companies that offer a combination of manufactured goods and services as an integrated system or a Product-Service System confront challenging conditions to maintain or increase their market share due to the complex relationship between manufacturing and service production systems. The complexity of a PSS makes it challenging to adapt its physical products to new customer requirements, satisfy new standards, or develop/adopt new technologies because any modification in one part of the system will undoubtedly affect the other. Therefore, it is necessary to propose an approach for managing the development process of a PSS from a broad perspective. The approach presented in this article combines the advantages of the Business Model Canvas to define the crucial functions of a business model with the service blueprinting capacity to represent service processes. The proposal describes a five stages methodology: Conceptualization, Business Model Design, Product-Service System (PSS) Scenarios, Blueprint design, and Validation. The methodology helps the analysis of a PSS from three perspectives: product, use, and result, which are the typical PSS scenarios. A case study applied to a company that distributes purified water is helpful to illustrate the methodology. Finally, the methodology includes some aspects that favor implementing creative and dynamic business models, emphasizing the constant changes in the evolution of products and services.
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The building and construction industry, which is responsible for 39% of global carbon emissions, is far off track in achieving its net-zero emission targets. Product-service system (PSS) business models are one of the instruments used by the industry in the transition toward reaching these targets. A PSS business model is designed around an end-of-life solution that minimizes material usage and maximizes energy efficiency. It is provided to customers as a marketable set of products and services, jointly capable of fulfilling a customer’s needs. There are signals from practice however, that suggest that the implementation of this type of business model is falling behind. This study investigates this and seeks to identify key challenges and opportunities for sustainable PSS business models in the built environment. Using a grounded theory approach, data from 13 semi-structured interviews across five companies is used to identify challenges and opportunities that suppliers are facing in selling their products through PSS business models. Our preliminary data analysis points to nine challenges and opportunities for PSS business models. We discuss these in the context of the current economic transition toward a sustainable and circular built environment and provide suggestions for further research that could help to overcome resistance toward the implementation of PSS business models. The contribution of this research to researchers and practitioners is that it provides insights into the adoption of new business models in fragmented and competitive business environments.
MULTIFILE
Although there exist various product and services to support people with dementia in their everyday activities and challenges, people with dementia and their informal caregivers experience many unmet needs. In this paper, we present the ongoing development process of a decision aid that aims to reveal these unmet needs and match them with relevant support and care solutions. This entails investigating the needs of people with dementia and caregivers, making an inventory of the product and service solutions, co-creating the question articulation to be used in the decision aid and developing and testing three design concepts. We aim that the insights we gained from the tests will inspire interaction designers and researchers that investigate person-centered dementia care.
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