PSS design through Design for Supply Chain: State of the art review

Abstract

Design for X (DfX) approaches are very important for designing products with a focus on whole lifecycle, to achieve cost reduction and product quality. The move to achieve competitiveness and unique offerings have resulted in the switch from a product to a Product Service Systems (PSS) business model. DfX concept is insufficient to address the complexity of PSS, therefore, additional concepts such as Design for Product Service Supportability (DfPSSu) are emerging. Existing research argued the role of support in ensuring customer satisfaction, revenue generation etc., which strengthens the motivation for PSS and servitization. The integration of support services into PSS has initiated the focus on DfPSSu, aiming at the synergic use of the different DfX approaches to concurrently support the services with the product features according their own heterogeneity. PSS complexity necessitates collaboration within the Supply Chain (SC) to deliver value to the customer, yet existing research focuses on individual firms. This highlights the importance of value creation in Design for SC (DfSC) in order to achieve competitiveness. This research would explore DfX from a value creation perspective while investigating the place of DfSC into the DfPSSu concept. This because DfSC encourages innovation in linking product design, process design and SC design together, according to the Concurrent Engineering paradigm. While there is need to DfSC, this idea is under-researched in literature. This paper would share the findings from a state of the art review of DfSC in relation to DfPSSu, identifying the evolution of the concept while identifying much research gap in understanding and application of this concept in theoretical and empirical research.