Digitalized Product-Service Systems in Manufacturing Firms: A Case Study Analysis

OVERVIEW:The merging trends of digitalization and servitization harbor extensive and largely unexplored potential for manufacturing firms. Digital systems can be linked with product-service bundles to build novel digitalized product-service systems (PSS), which use digital architectures to provide services independently and proactively. This paper gives an overview of service digitalization in industrial firms and describes three types of digitalized PSS, differentiated by purpose and by technical and organizational architecture. Each of the three types addresses a different stage of the product life cycle and improves performance or efficiency; in the long run, digitalized PSS can help improve a firm's overall innovation activity.