A Framework for Evaluating Product-Service Systems Strategies

Product-Service Systems (PSS) are new business strategies moving and extending the product value towards its functional usage and related required services. From a theoretical point of view the PSS concept is known since a decade and many Authors reported reasonable possible success factors: higher profits over the entire life-cycle, diminished environmental burden, and localization of required services. Many researchers reported very interesting experiments in large enterprises, typically specialized in functional goods production, while small and medium enterprises (SME) have not been properly considered especially in terms of global service strategy. From the flexibility point of view, SMEs seem to be facilitated in approaching a PSS business strategy, by a rapid re-organization of their value-chain/supply-chain (VC/SC), but, on the other hand, they require a structured, and interrelated approach in order to investigate and implement such a strategy. The reported research aims to identify and investigate key issues of a PSS strategy implantation in the SMEs context through a complete framework for new PSS initiatives evaluation.