A reference architecture for agile product-service systems

In times of globalization and saturated markets, manufacturing companies are forced to find new possibilities of differentiation against competitors. Product-service systems (PSS) are a strategic approach that offers this possibility by integrating goods and services. The implementation of a PSS entails challenges for the resulting supply chain structure and the IT infrastructure supporting coordinated service offerings, such as conflicting goals and coordination in the integrated business processes. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm, based on loosely coupled components, provides rapid reconfiguration of business processes, rapid integration of services and goal definition through service level agreements. This paper presents a reference architecture based on SOA to support coordination and definition of goals in heterogeneous supply chains. (C) 2012 CIRP.