Product management for industrial product service systems: A model towards the understanding of the role of product management

Abstract

Due to increasing competition and new consumer trends, the importance of innovation for industrial product service system is continuously increasing. Industrial companies must constantly come up with new ways to differentiate themselves from cheaper competitors, which also increases the complexity of product management tasks. In this paper, we aim to improve the understanding of the individual tasks of product management in an industrial environment, to identify their interrelationships and to measure and optimize the quality of the executed processes. In total, we defined 22 different industrial product management tasks along the product lifecycle, determined by five maturity levels within 14 maturity dimensions for each object. Subsequently, the model was tested in several industrial companies. Initial validations of the model's structure and content show that the model is transparent, easy to use, and has proven its applicability in real business environments.