Understanding of a product/service system design: a holistic approach to support design for remanufacturing

A product/service system (PSS) facilitates remanufacturing and thus is the article’s subject. This article presents a first quantitative analysis, through a descriptive study, of the details of a PSS design case. To do so, an example of PSS design was conducted using a real offering in the marketplace, and this design episode was analyzed through protocol analysis developed further by the authors. The results of the analysis include reasonable hypotheses: PSS design begins with needs by and value for a customer, addresses primarily life cycle activities for solutions, and ends back with value. In addition, life cycle activities, which accounted for about 30% of the episode, were found to be given a central role within PSS design. Furthermore, reasoning about problems, which spent more than 30% of the design, seems to be a new and important type of activity in PSS design as compared to physical product design. This article contributes to greater understanding of PSS design process in quantitative terms and thus to developing effective support for PSS design. Knowledge about PSS enables the understanding of remanufacturing with a more holistic perspective and thus creating an opportunity for better optimization of remanufacturers’ activities.