Abstracts:Industry is facing a deep transformation in production and consumption modes, moving towards sustainable and customer-oriented practices. In this context, Product-Service Systems (PSS) provide innovative business models that can create a higher value compared to traditional product-centric approaches. Fostering the transformation of the manufacturing industry towards PSS requires a holistic approach spanning over business model definition and transformation. During the last two decades, the research about business models has been generally focused on the economic and governance issues of the internal value chain. Only little literature has explained the business model as a dynamic system, which encompasses the value creation throughout the entire lifecycle of the offer. In this paper, we investigate and discuss the contribution of lifecycle thinking to the business model approach for PSS. This paper presents a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journals and indexed conference papers in order to get a large scope of analysis. 33 papers between 2010 and 2017 were analysed. As a result, we propose a conceptual framework for designing business models for PSS offers with a lifecycle perspective illustrated by an example inspired by a real case company.

Abstracts:The Product-service system (PSS) concept has been heavily discussed within the literature, emphasizing its refinement, barriers to implementation and design methodologies. In this sense, the role of public policies and governments has been overlooked, being discussed by very few articles. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the public policy and regulation discussions within the product-service system literature in order to extract the main themes and characteristics. The research methods combined bibliometric and content analysis. Public policies are required in order to overcome barriers to implementation and diffusion of PSS such as corporate, cultural and regulatory barriers, through PSS-directed policies or indirectly linked to PSS policies.

Abstracts:With the development, more and more research has begun to focus on product service systems. Product service systems link tangible products with intangible services to improve the company’s competitiveness. As an important part of product service, after-sales service directly affects the company’s image and interests. In order to ensure a good after-sales service level, the manufacturing company sets up service district for each service provider. Each service provider is only responsible for providing the required spare parts within the service district, which guarantees the service level to some extent. However, due to the instability of demand, spare parts inventory of service providers often suffers from shortages or accumulation problems. Shortage of stocks will cause excessive demand delay penalty, and the accumulation of stocks will result in a large amount of funds. How to ensure the level of service, balance the shortage and accumulation of inventory, and reduce the cost of spare parts have become an urgent problem to be solved. In order to make full use of inventory and reduce the amount of funds used, this paper do the research on spare parts inventory optimization for inter-district transport. At the same time, taking into account the need of transport vehicles in transport, this paper considers the restrictions on transport vehicles. This paper studies the optimization of spare parts inventory for inter-district transport, taking into account the limitation of the capacity of transport vehicles. Due to the limited capacity of transport vehicles, the setting of transshipment priority should not only consider the distance between service providers, but also consider the relationship between the number of transshipments and the number of vehicles required. In order to minimize the cost of spare parts, the paper establishes an inventory optimization model with the inter-district transport, and presents a mathematical model for directly transporting spare parts without considering transport vehicles and a mathematical model that does not consider inter-district transport. We find that, whether to consider the restrictions of transport vehicles, system behavior can vary drastically.

Abstracts:Today, machine manufacturers generate a significant share of their revenues with the provision of services. At the same time, they are confronted with the challenge of adopting of Industrie 4.0. One of the most important Industrie 4.0 concepts is the idea of the digital shadow, which contributes to the comprehensive structuring of different kinds of data from different data sources. It can be defined as the sufficiently precise, digital representation of reality in real-time. Thus, it also functions as a database of the considered area of a company that can be used for numerous applications. It serves as a central platform for the aggregation and distribution of data. Thereby, it helps to open isolated data silos. A system architecture that enables extraction of data from various sources and the aggregation of that data is an important prerequisite for the digital shadow. In addition, the merger of data from different sources requires a model of the part of the company to be mapped digitally. In this paper, we focus on maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services of machine manufacturers. The scope comprises the whole order processing of a service including the utilized resources and the obtained results. MRO services and their single elements are mapped and structured using a case study research in a first step. Those elements provide a basis for designing the digital shadow. A second contribution of this paper is a data model for the digital shadow of MRO services that entails a comprehensive representation of that department.

Abstracts:Service technicians spend a considerable amount of their working hours in order to search for information regarding a current work order. In case of an IPS² malfunction for example, they can either search for potential failure causes within previously documented repair reports that describe a similar malfunction or manually inspect the IPS². On the one hand the former IT-related information procurement is caused by a large amount of irrelevant search results rendered by current state of the art information retrieval approaches implemented in maintenance-related IT systems. On the other hand many repair reports suffer from missing or ambiguous information and a holistically low data quality, which makes it difficult for the service technicians to derive task-related information from a particular repair report, although this report basically describes the same malfunction. These current difficulties will be amplified once service partners get access to maintenance-related information documented by other service partners (companies) within the IPS² network as the amount of available data will increase drastically and new problems will raise concerning the heterogeneity of the data. The paper on hand presents a semantic quality assurance concept for heterogeneous unstructured repair reports that addresses the low data quality problem by utilizing natural language processing and machine learning methods to automatically analyze the service technician’s inputs during the repair report creation process and by notifying him of potential losses in data quality. The concept’s feasibility has been shown by performing a case study with a prototype that utilizes the developed methods.

Abstracts:Durable equipment requires regular maintenance throughout the lifecycle to achieve the expected performance and reliability under acceptable maintenance costs. This paper proposes a maintenance scenario evaluation method for point-of-sale (POS) terminals. The scenarios are the description of differences in the intervals and contents of maintenance service, which diversify the frequency of product failures and the maintenance costs. The evaluation method quantifies risks caused by the failures based on lifecycle simulation (LCS) and risk assessment to support selecting an appropriate maintenance scenario. In the method, the LCS calculates the frequency of failures and the monetary flow of maintenance activities, and the risk assessment is used to estimate the degree of risks depending on the maintenance scenario.

Abstracts:Remanufacturing is a business model that helps the development of the circular economy. There are numerous successful examples of remanufactured products in different industrial sectors of Europe and US. Obtaining the maximum benefit of remanufacturing is related to the client recognizing the value of his assets at the end of its life, and that the manufacturer makes products that have the functionality and durability required. These aspects, can be improved if the remanufactured products are converted into a product-service systems (PSS). The objective of this research is to identify the opportunities, challenges, drivers and barriers for the development of remanufacturing activities in the main industrial sectors of the Basque Country. The research team has analysed 890 industrial companies, of which 197 companies have been identified the potential to development their remanufacturing process. After that, in order to know the reality of the different industrial sectors of the Basque Country, the research team developed a questionnaire oriented to the companies with the highest remanufacturing potential. In addition, they interviewed the industrial managers and directors of innovation of the 18 leading industrial companies in the Basque Country. The research team estimated that the remanufacturing process in the Basque Country is an emerging activity with great potential for development for 2025. The initial sales estimate for the five priority sectors analysed in 2016 is 63.6 million euros, and for 2025 is 163 million. According to the interviews, the main motivations that companies have for remanufacturing are strategic advantage and differentiation, high product value and high durability of the product. The main barriers identified are access to products, the resulting quality and market valuation.

Abstracts:Remanufacturing has been identified as having much potential and providing a wide range of benefits. However, challenges remain for remanufacturing to be widely accepted, both from customers as well as within industrial firms. Business models for remanufacturing are complex and remanufacturing requires multiple competences across the firm. This paper is a study of the remanufacturing market for industrial products and is exemplified by a case study of a leading robot company in the US market. The study shows that rapid technology development impacts the remanufacturing possibilities and as such has an impact on sustainability. Technology development can be seen as a threat to remanufacturing e.g. making products become obsolete as well as leading to compatibility problems where it is difficult to find spare parts. Technology development also results in cheaper robots, making it difficult to provide economic incentives to buy remanufactured products. However, fast technology development can also be a possibility to firms that have well developed remanufacturing processes, as they are able to adjust to newer technologies. The study also points to the importance of cross-functional collaboration in the design phase of products, where remanufacturing needs to be considered. The article provides implications on how to manage rapid technology development in remanufacturing.

Abstracts:Within their lifetime, products and processes pass through characteristic periods, which can be divided into distinct phases, such as design, production, use, and disposal. Specially, the production phase of products consumes a great amount of energy, non-renewable materials, renewable materials, ancillary inputs, and fossil fuels. Moreover, significant amounts of emissions (wastes, effluents, and greenhouse gases) are generated, which lead to sustainable impacts, such as extra costs, environmental damages, social issues. Through a systematic overview of resources and emissions during the production planning process, potential sustainable impacts can be identified and possibly avoided. The paper presents a concept for a fuzzy inference model to evaluate production programs for short- and mid-term production planning according to sustainable indicators. For this approach, the paper presents criteria to select applicable measurements for sustainable production planning, three categories of sustainable indicators to evaluate production programs, a procedure to develop the fuzzy inference model, and possible actions for optimizing production programs to increase the degree of sustainability. In future works, the fuzzy inference model will be implemented in enterprises to demonstrate the benefits of sustainable production planning.

Abstracts:Manufacturing companies are increasingly focusing on the field of the After Sales Service. In the primary product sector, margins are often very low for these companies due to stricter business conditions. This is due to the fact that more and more new competitors are operating on the market and price pressure is dominating. Therefore, new distinguishing features must be identified. The After Sales Service is a possible instrument for this purpose. By providing After Sales Services, primary product manufacturers can differentiate themselves from competitors. In addition, excellent After Sales Services can also increase customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. The importance of After Sales Service can be seen, for example, in the fact that manufacturing companies generate a high percentage of the profit with the After Sales Service. In order to design the After Sales Service efficiently in the future, methodological approaches must be identified and implemented. This paper presents a process-oriented approach based on process characteristics to identify suitable principles of Lean Production Systems based on process characteristics in the After Sales Service. For this purpose, process characteristics are analyzed for the core processes in the After Sales Service and principles are identified on the basis of these process characteristics.