Knowledge-Based Product-Service Ecosystems

Due to the ongoing digital transformation, businesses are exposed to work with a dynamic business environment. Traditional 1-to-1 relationships between manufacturers and end customers are transformed into a network of relationships between manufacturers, end customers, software developers, suppliers, and third parties. The network of partners evolves into an ecosystem. Using a smart product-service system as the central anchor of value creation for an ecosystem enables hybrid value creation for producers and consumers simultaneously. In this paper we develop a knowledge-based model of smart product-service systems in their corresponding ecosystems, that assists designers and developers in decision making during the product development process.