Service Design Process for Result Oriented Product Service System (RPSS): Challenges and Future Trends in the Healthcare Sector

Abstract

In order to achieve sustainability, manufacturing companies and service providers in the healthcare sector are increasingly offering services related to their medical equipment to gain competitive advantage. This move downstream towards the customer is termed 'servitization.' The Result Oriented Product Service-System (RPSS) is considered as a special case in servitization. This paper aims to identify the challenges in the service design process for RPSS. These have been realised through a critical review of current available literature on Service design and RPSS and industrial applications in the healthcare sector. Challenges in service design concept, process phases, tools and methods were identified; customer involvement challenges in service design process were discussed to formulate the necessary future research in the health care sector. © 2013 by American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.