Product-Service Systems (PSS) raise interesting opportunities for the manufacturing firm as the function is provided to meet customer needs rather than the physical hardware itself. PSS offerings based on the manufacturer's knowledge about the product and the technology can increase its status as problem-solver and solution-provider, reduce life cycle cost and produce high revenue. However, PSS including, e.g. hardware, services, software and electronics are efficient and competitive only if developed for the specific purpose with features such as easy to maintain, upgradeable, with built-in sensors for collecting in-use and service data, and easy to use. This changes the requirements on the manufacturing firm's development process. Looking back historically, the last century gives an interesting changing landscape of the rationale for the product-development methods used in manufacturing firms. This article, based on the previous research in the product- and service-development fields, and on empirical results from studies at several manufacturing firms, looks into how the engineering work is affected by PSS and how it can be enhanced for PSS, especially in terms of required competencies and other capabilities. It results in recommendations for a new, functional product-development process.

Recent economic transformations have forced companies to redefine their value propositions, increasing traditional product offerings with supplementary services—the so-called Product-Service System (PSS). Among them, the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies is very common. However, the directions that companies are undertaking to offer new value to their customers in the Industry 4.0 have not yet been investigated in detail. Based on a focus group, this paper contributes to this understanding by identifying the main trajectories that would shape a future scenario in which PSS and Industry 4.0 would merge. In addition, future research directions addressing (a) the transformation of the PSS value chain into a PSS ecosystem, (b) the transformation inside a single company towards becoming a PSS provider, and (c) the digital transformation of the traditional PSS business model are identified.

As functional (total care) products emerge in the jet engine industry, the need for product life-cycle models capable of definition and evaluation of life cycle properties increases, since functional products (FP) includes both hardware and service. Recent life-cycle models are intended for hardware products and mostly handle design and manufacturing knowledge. The aim of this article is to present a design approach that extends the evaluation capabilities beyond classical hardware design and manufacturing evaluation. The focus has been to introduce evaluation of manufacturing and post-manufacturing activities in evaluation of conceptual designs. For this purpose, a model has been proposed to handle the information flow between teams when developing structural jet engine components. A case study, in which the proposed model was used in cooperation with a jet engine component manufacturer, is presented. Aspects concerning design, manufacturing, performance, and maintenance of jet engine flanges were included in the example by means of a knowledge based engineering (KBE)-system coupled to databases and spreadsheets. The model is more suitable than recent work for the development of hardware parts of functional products (HFP), since knowledge from more product development disciplines is included. As the engineer changes the design and directly assesses the life-cycle cost (LCC) and how the changes impact the interface to other jet engine components, more knowledge on the impact of design decisions is available at hand for the engineering designer than without the model.

This paper investigates how Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, as a process innovation, may contribute to a job creation. Further, the various mechanisms in which AM may contribute to an increase in job creation as well as the types of jobs are analyzed. The analysis also goes beyond AM technologies and incorporates other non-technological factors which foster job creation, i.e. higher wages in BRIC countries, lower quality in BRIC countries, and a rising demand for western-made products. The analysis is based on a case study and the data collected was through interviews with three prominent actors within the AM technologies field in Sweden: technology developers, leading suppliers and users. The main findings indicate that AM (i) contributes to job creation in both the manufacturing sector and in the service sector, (ii) does not bring back mass production jobs from emerging economies such as BRIC, (iii) contributes to job creation in product development stages (e.g. rapid prototyping), and (iv) contributes to job creation in production stages of low-volume batches mainly of complex products. The findings also suggest there are barriers for full exploitation of AM in several areas, including education systems