An evaluation scheme for product-service system models with a lifecycle consideration from customer's perspective

Abstract

The product-service system (PSS) is a business system in which its integrated products and services jointly fulfill customer needs. This research proposes an evaluation scheme for PSS models. The PSS model evaluation scheme consists of evaluation criteria and methods. The current paper mainly focuses on the introduction of the evaluation criteria and their application. The set of evaluation criteria has a four-layered hierarchical structure which has 2 perspectives, 5 dimensions, 21 categories, and 94 items in total. They are designed to consider the provider and customer perspectives, and all 3P (profitability, planet, and people) dimensions. They cover various stages of a PSS lifecycle, namely, design, production, sales (or purchase), usage as well as disposal. To illustrate the usefulness of the proposed evaluation scheme, a few PSS cases are first modeled using an existing PSS visualization tool, and then evaluated using the scheme. Case studies show the proposed evaluation scheme is workable to assess the potential value of the PSS models in question; it provides an extensive knowledge base for PSS evaluation, thereby serves as an efficient and effective aid to practitioners for successful PSS development.