A Framework for Product-Service Design for Manufacturing Firms

Manufacturers propose services around the products they deliver to increase their competitiveness and reach objectives of profitability satisfying specific customer needs. Loyalty can be obtained under the condition that isolated offerings are replaced by integrated value adding solution composed of a product and of one or more product-service. The design of such solution requires to take account of four narrowly overlapping dimensions: the product, the product-service, the process and the organization. A challenge is to propose a model to support the firm core competence widening taking account of all the dimensions together, analyzing how they are interlinked and how they allow to design the coherent value adding solution. In this paper the two first stages of a methodology for new product-service development for manufacturing firms are presented that take account of firm's environment, core competence, processes as well as the benefits expected by service delivery and the service value.