The impact of digitalization on product-service system development in the manufacturing industry

EasyChair Preprint 535

Abstract

Digitalization is a trend that is changing society and that will also have significant effects on the manufacturing industry. Simultaneously with the digitalization trend, formerly product-centric companies have been increasingly adopting service components in their products and basing their competitive strategies on services. The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of how manufacturing companies see the effects of digitalization in their business, and how digitalization might affect their product and service provision. The paper presents the views of important actors in the manufacturing service ecosystems. The paper utilises case study approach and the nature of the study is exploratory. The research data was collected by semi-structured interviews with experts representing different roles in manufacturing ecosystems. The different views of solution providers, ICT infrastructure companies, and subcontractors are presented. According to the study, digitalization has the potential to make the benefits of the product-service sytems (PSS) more transparent. Lead producers and IT infrastructure companies already utilise information produced in their business ecosystem, but the subcontractors consider that the use of external information will realise in 5 to 10 years. Currently, digitalization mainly affects assets and asset related services. The importance of ICT and service components increases when moving towards more advanced PSS. Digitalization is expected to drastically disrupt the way the manufacturing companies operate and potentially threaten the market position of the incumbents. The paper builds a classification for digitalization-enabled PSS for manufacturing industry and contributes to the scarce body of literature that deals with digitalization-enabled PSS. The study also identifies the significance and value of the ICT and service components as a part of advanced forms of PSS.

Keyphrases: Digitalization, Manufacturing, Product-Service System, Servitization

@booklet{EasyChair:535,
  author    = {Jyri Hanski and Helena Kortelainen and Teuvo Uusitalo},
  title     = {The impact of digitalization on product-service system development in the manufacturing industry},
  doi       = {10.29007/36kb},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 535},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2018}}