Product-Service Systems Design Approach : Servitization of a Small Furniture Manufacturing Company

Service elements are added to the product to improve the company it its sales and innovation. The servitization process could take many different routes reflecting various properties of the manufacturing firm and its business contexts. Product-service systems (PSS) design method developed at Sungkyunkwan Universty, Service Design Institute, has been applied to a small furniture manufacturing company to demonstrate the utility of the method and to devise improvements. First, the business context of the company has been analyzed and key values have been identified. A co-creative session has been conducted to develop initial service concepts to drive those key values. The diverse positioning of those service concepts on the scale of service supporting product and service support customer is then developed to plan servitization phases. The specific service concepts are about company-customer relationship building as well as customization and personalization in this case. Initial service concepts are detailed with service blueprint so that prototyping and customer experience evaluation can be done. Business models in different servitization phases are designed. Further prototyping and customer experience evaluation has been done with business strategy improvements. In this paper, the proudct-service systems design method has been reviewed and the specific and real processes of the servitization using design will be described with discussion on the improvement of the method and the enhancement of the business.