Environmental Assessment Methods of Smart PSS: Heating Appliance Case Study

Abstract

At the heart of industry 4.0, industrials are developing integrated offers of “Smart Product-Service Systems”. Many industrial firms are moving toward product-service systems (PSS) due to their capacity to involve value systems, business models, boundary spanning, dynamic capabilities, and other factors leading to reduced environmental impacts. In this paper, we introduce an easy-to-implement method to evaluate Smart PSSs applied to residential heating systems. Our approach is based on existing environmental assessment methods (focus on Life Cycle Assessment) and accounts for resource consumption, toxic and greenhouse gas emissions as well as waste generation. On the other hand, it also considers different features of the circular economy including the upgradability of Smart PSS offerings and end-of-life heating systems.