Knowledge generation as a means to improve development processes of industrial product-service systems

In business-to-business and also business-to-customer markets there is a tendency towards combined offers of products and services, which are sold in one package to fulfil customer needs. These combinations of products and services are called product-service systems (PSS) or industrial product-service systems (IPS2) in case of industrial application. Feedback approaches for knowledge which can be captured during the delivery and use phase of IPS2 are discussed in this paper. This knowledge is notably valuable for the development process of IPS2. The focus is on knowledge generation systems capturing information related to products and processes anywhere available. These, so called Virtual Life Cycle Units (VLCU) collect operation data of products and services and generate knowledge about the systems behaviour or usage. Both development and operation benefit of captured information and generated knowledge to improve systems development and operation projects. The role of the knowledge generation, enabled by the VLCU, in the IPS2 development process will be described in detail using different PSS examples and business models.