Product-service systems (PSS), or value propositions, are foreseen to bring about challenges in product development. Traditionally, engineers normally manage tangible elements in relation to products, and are lacking approaches to deal with the intangibles incorporated in PSS development. The purpose of the paper is to elaborate on and propose a framework for value assessment and a simulation approach. Conceptual examples are used to discuss the proposed framework, and a contribution of the paper is that it exemplifies the reasons why intangible value have to be addressed more directly in industry in general and in PSS in particular.

Product-Service Systems (PSS) has now for more than a decade been a research interest in Europe and Japan. The research aims to support manufacturing industries’ ability to provide value in terms of a service offer to its customers, simultaneously taking a more holistic approach to eco-sustainability. The idea of providing customer benefits in parallel with robust products is not new, yet equipping engineers to integrate a radical innovation and service perspective in the early design stages is received as fairly radical. Prevailing methods, tools and design thinking are barriers that prevents approaching PSS by the necessary integration of several, but distinct, logics.Due to the inclusion of both product development and service development in development of PSS, at least, two schools of thoughts exist within the research field of PSS development. Namely, one based on product development rationality and one based on service provision reasoning. In general, such a situation would be a base for a conflict where the debate focuses, which strand that should be more valid than the other. However, if so, this would certainly not benefit the need for cross-disciplinarily research of PSS. The purpose in this paper is two-fold; first, to describe PSS research efforts by acknowledging both the product and the service perspective, second to explore and discuss future directions and by that identify “white spots” on the map which may be seen as relevant to bridge the integration gap.

Total Offers, Functional Products, and Integrated Product Service Engineering reflect a shift toward service offers from manufacturing industry captured within the term Product-Service Systems (PSS). Manufacturing companies have traditionally focused design and development activities on realizing technical and engineered aspects of physical artifacts, while PSS include deeper understanding of customers’ expectation, needs and perceived value, hence calling for modelling of additional aspects. The change in early design processes and the effects on virtual modelling of product properties are discussed in this paper through aerospace industry examples to clarify ‘parameters of change’, giving suggestions for a simulation driven design (SDD) approach.

The aim of the paper is to discuss the rising potential of social software to increase the knowledge management capabilities of virtual product development teams. It presents six fundamental transitions, elaborated from the empirical findings, which justify the rise of a more bottom-up, social creation and sharing of engineering knowledge in the virtual organisation. The study suggests that traditional engineering knowledge management approaches alone are not sufficient to support development activities in the virtual organisation, and that such teams display an increasing demand for social, comparatively lightweight and remixable platforms for bottom-up, social creation and sharing of knowledge.

A manufacturing company’s unique intellectual capital is to a largeextent built on experience from its own product development andmanufacturing processes. Thus, methods and tools to utilize and benefit fromthis experience in an efficient way have an impact on a company’s ability tostay competitive and advance on the global market. Knowledge BasedEngineering (KBE) is an engineering methodology to capture engineeringknowledge systematically into the design system. Hence, KBE tools areconsidered to support experience re-use and improve engineering activities.This paper presents the results from a study where the objective was toinvestigate the support for experience re-use in KBE applications in anaerospace company. A proposed framework is presented to analyze thecapturing and use of experience in a company’s processes identifying gaps andpropose improvements. The study revealed weaknesses in the process steps forexperience feedback which can be used to improve KBE applications further.

Novel rotating machinery design concepts and architectures are being explored to reduce mass, energy consumption, manufacturing costs, and environmental impact while increasing performance. As component manufacturers supply parts to original equipment manufacturers, it is desirable to design the components using a systems approach so that they are optimized for system-level performance. To accomplish that, suppliers must be able to model and predict the behavior of the whole machinery. Traditional computer-aided design/computer-aided engineering master-modeling approaches enable manual changes to be propagated to linked models. Novel knowledge-based master-modeling approaches enable automated coordination of multidisciplinary analyses. In this article, we present a specific implementation of such a knowledge-based master-modeling approach that facilitates multidisciplinary design optimization of rotating machinery. The master-model (MM) approach promotes the existence of a single governing version of the product definition as well as operating scenarios. Rules, scripts, and macros link the MM to domain-specific models. A simple yet illustrative industry application is presented, where rotor-dynamics and displacement analyses are performed to evaluate relocation alternatives for the rear bearing position of a rotating machinery under a ‘fan-blade-off’ load case.

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of driver’s perceptions of Head-Up Displays (HUD). Many HUD studies have been conducted but few have allowed drivers to test a HUD in their own vehicle, allowing them to choose the best HUD location for themselves. Forty participants drove their own vehicles using a portable HUD, testing different HUD locations and then rating it using the Technology Acceptance Model. The results showed that the HUD was rated as easy to use and the drivers intended to use it in continuation. The drivers wanted the HUD to be located outside of the traffic scene, either to the right, left or below their line of sight. These results give support for new HUD locations and for increased HUD implementation.

Emerging from an industrial case study in the aerospace industry, the paper proposes an approach to evaluate subsystem technology concepts from a life cycle perspective. The approach is composed by 5 main phases that aims to drive product designers towards more value-oriented design decisions. It is shown how different life cycle alternatives, such as the selling of a Product-Service- System instead of a traditional product, deeply impact the value of design alternatives. The described approach has been developed in collaboration with industrial partners and represents a potential instrument to enhance value-driven product design.

The extension of businesses to incorporate the provision of function as a service in supplement to standalone products is an ongoing movement in manufacturing industry. In short, this means that the development intent should be guided by the need of ‘performance in use’ that the customer wants, e.g. thrust rather than an engine. By this, the established knowledge base challenges the development team.This paper embarks from the assumption that there are three main challenges, i.e. (1) innovation activities, (2) customer data acquisition and (3) the transformation of data into design information. The purpose is to discuss knowledge sharing activities to contribute to product-service innovation. In this study it has been found that contemporary data acquisition activities filter out important dimensions of knowledge. Thus, does not provide a sound base for service provisions.