Revisiting the research field of product-service systems development

Product-Service Systems (PSS) has now for more than a decade been a research interest in Europe and Japan. The research aims to support manufacturing industries’ ability to provide value in terms of a service offer to its customers, simultaneously taking a more holistic approach to eco-sustainability. The idea of providing customer benefits in parallel with robust products is not new, yet equipping engineers to integrate a radical innovation and service perspective in the early design stages is received as fairly radical. Prevailing methods, tools and design thinking are barriers that prevents approaching PSS by the necessary integration of several, but distinct, logics.Due to the inclusion of both product development and service development in development of PSS, at least, two schools of thoughts exist within the research field of PSS development. Namely, one based on product development rationality and one based on service provision reasoning. In general, such a situation would be a base for a conflict where the debate focuses, which strand that should be more valid than the other. However, if so, this would certainly not benefit the need for cross-disciplinarily research of PSS. The purpose in this paper is two-fold; first, to describe PSS research efforts by acknowledging both the product and the service perspective, second to explore and discuss future directions and by that identify “white spots” on the map which may be seen as relevant to bridge the integration gap.Godkänd; 2012; Bibliografisk uppgift: Paper no DETC2012-70779; 20130308 (asaeri