Understanding Information Requirements in Product-service Systems Design

Service information is the information that is required to support the taking of decisions and actions in a service environment. In product-service systems (PSS) this information includes both information to support the lifecycles of physical products and associated services and information to support the management of services. Service blueprinting techniques have been used for visualising and mapping service activities. Effective delivery of service demands access to high quality service information (i.e. complete, correct, minimal and available to the right people at the right time). In this paper we extend the concept of the traditional service blueprint to include service information needed to deliver PSS. Three types of service information are considered: input information, process information and output information. The result is a Service Information Blueprint. In this paper we demonstrate, using a case study, how the service information blueprint is influenced by changes in service definition and contract type.