Machine tools play a pivotal role in the manufacturing world since their performance significantly affects the product quality and production efficiency. In the era of Industry 4.0, machine tools are ...expected to have a higher level of accessibility, connectivity, intelligence, adaptivity, and autonomy. With the rapid development and application of various Industry 4.0 technologies, digitalisation and servitisation of machine tools have become a new research trend. However, few review articles on the development of machine tools in the context of Industry 4.0 have been reported. To understand the current status of digitalisation and servitisation of machine tools, this paper provides a systematic literature review combining both bibliometric and qualitative analysis. Our review results provide a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of recent advancements of digitalisation and servitisation of machine tools, including the key enabling technologies, methods, standards, architectures, and applications. Furthermore, we propose a novel conceptual framework of Cyber-Physical Machine Tool (CPMT) as a systematic approach to achieving digitalisation and servitisation of next-generation machine tools. Finally, major research issues, challenges, and future research directions are discussed. This work will help researchers and industrial practitioners spark new ideas for developing the next-generation machine tools in the era of Industry 4.0.
This paper presents two approaches to developing PSS (product-service systems) business ecosystems for manufacturing and service organisations by leveraging digital development. Our research is based ...on two in-depth, comparative case studies of large multinational corporations: one manufacturing company that takes the servitisation approach and the other a logistics services company taking a productisation approach. The research addresses two principal gaps in extant PSS research. First, most extant PSS research focuses predominantly on servitisation development and overlooks the productisation perspective. We address this gap by considering PSS from both a productisation and servitisation perspective. Second, extant research investigates PSS integration mainly from the ‘technical’ and ‘commercial’ perspectives. In contrast, this research adds a ‘social’ perspective by considering the business-to-authority (B2A) and business-to-public (B2P) relations. The findings also provide business practitioners with preliminary yet meaningful insights into holistic consideration of PSS ecosystem integration from ‘technical’, ‘commercial’ and ‘social’ perspectives. Moreover, we seek to push the boundaries of PSS ecosystem research and promote interdisciplinary research across fields, including business strategy, industrial marketing, social marketing, public policy and supply chain management.
•The PSS ecosystems can be realised by manufacturing and service organisations through servitisation and productisation.•PSS ecosystem integration requires holistic consideration from ‘technical’, ‘commercial’, and ‘social’ perspectives.•Business to authority (B2A) and business to public (B2P) relations emerge in PSS ecosystems.•The research promotes interdisciplinary collaboration among business strategy, industrial marketing, social marketing, public policy and SCM.
This paper introduces factors that characterise the organisational application of remote monitoring technology (RMT) for servitised strategies. Factors were developed through in-depth case studies of ...four manufacturers operating in aerospace, industrial equipment, marine and transportation sector. They suggest a very complex, multi-levelled, multifaceted and circular relationship between RMT and servitisation. When unfolding this relationship we need to consider: the value proposition, nature of the product and its hierarchical position in the customer's business, RMT functionality, type and amount of data required, and a number of other factors that either complement or constrain the use of RMT. By providing the necessary lenses, the proposed factors can help in exploring this complexity. One such exploration questions our understanding of outcome-based contracting.
Product-Service Systems (PSS) terminology is becoming increasingly common across management disciplines. Despite rapid growth in the number of PSS publications, relatively little attention has been ...dedicated to advancing the theoretical underpinnings required for robust PSS research. This paper aims to address this issue through a two-stage systematic review. Initially, we conducted a first-stage ‘review of reviews’ to set up a broad database for the preliminary understanding of PSS evolution and its theoretical progress. Subsequently, we undertook a second-stage review to explore the use of different theories for developing PSS research. We identify four clusters of theories and illustrate how they underpin ten distinct research themes and a systems approach in PSS. We then construct a framework of five theoretical lenses (identity, competence, efficiency, power and systems) that guide theory development discussion in PSS research. We argue that further research would benefit from adopting a systems approach that explores the interactions in PSS and favors interdisciplinary theory development. More studies on productisation and comparable studies between servitisation and productisation are also encouraged, for example, between industrial and consumer products and between B2B and B2C models.
The UN 2030 agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) envisions a future of inclusive equity, justice and prosperity within planetary boundaries, and places an important emphasis on
ending ...poverty
(SDG 1) and on
sustainable economic growth
(SDG 8). Target 8.4 refers to the need to improve global resource efficiency in consumption and production, and decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation, the ultimate goal of a sustainable circular economy. Here, we explore the potential of the transition to such an economy, and discuss the transformation required for moving away from our current model of consumption with its ever increasing generation of waste. The primary aim of such transformation is to rethink what we understand as growth, in order to redefine what is meant by progress and, in the process, redesign our economies, ultimately decoupling our prosperity from material consumption, carbon emissions and waste. Dematerialisation, servitisation, collaborative consumption and a shift from ownership to access have the potential to restructure the economics of consumption, accelerate decoupling, and help us to envision and potentially create a circular economy that delivers social, economic and environmental benefits for all. However, their current deployment without policy steer, public support and appropriate technology developments could turn to be a missed opportunity for ensuring sustainable economic growth fully aligned with sound environmental stewardship and social development, and the transition to a truly sustainable circular economy.
Servitisation is usually associated to Industry 4.0, as it is conceived as the bundling of products and services by manufacturing firms, with the aim to compete on the market. This paper, instead, ...separates out the two concepts, claiming that, notwithstanding certain areas of overlap, these transformations involve different actors, different sources of value creation and deeply affect the economy and society with differentiated spatial development patterns. The territorial dimension of these transformations has been so far neglected in the literature. Instead, where these technological transformations take place is important, since they are sources of new growth opportunities as well as of new interregional inequalities. This paper aims at conceptually providing an operational definition of the different technological transformations, and empirically identifying them in the European territory. On conceptual grounds, the paper elaborates on why and in which territorial contexts these transformations are most likely to take place and, on empirical grounds, the paper documents the existence of such transformations in European NUTS-2 region over the period 2008-2016.
After-sales and aftermarkets are significant revenue streams for industrial companies. After-sales services are activities during warranty periods that include field technical assistance, spare parts ...distribution, customer care, and accessories sale. Aftermarket support involves secondary market transactions for additional products (e.g. accessories and add-ons) and product recovery processes. An awareness of the potentials of both concepts is evident by the extensive body of production and operations management (POM) publications that investigate the perspectives of both academia and practitioners. Yet, there is an absence of a systematic review to analyse research studies on after-sales and aftermarkets in a POM context. This article reviews the POM literature on after-sales services and aftermarket support. The review identifies and critically appraises 249 peer-reviewed articles published between 1970 and 2018. It examines the research clusters, investigated industry sectors, research methodologies, theories and contributions of studies. Using insights from the review process, the article also proposes theoretical foundations, sets a research agenda, and identifies optimisation problems for future after-sales and aftermarket studies.
Due to customer pressure and growing competition, industrial companies are increasingly moving towards providing integrated offerings of products and services (PSS). Despite this trend, literature ...providing a deep understanding of the challenges associated with this transition is limited, while publications discussing approaches that focus on overcoming these challenges are particularly lacking. This article is based on a multi-case study of two Swedish industrial companies undergoing the transition to designing and providing PSS. It reports on the challenges identified at the case companies as well as opportunities arising from and solutions to these challenges. Subsequent to initial research on the challenges, prescriptive approaches such as a life cycle costing method and a PSS design method were applied in the case companies over an extended time frame. On the one hand, these prescriptive approaches provided both a deeper understanding of the challenges, which include a persistent product centred mindset, a lack of adjustment to changed incentive structures and the separation of product and service design. On the other hand, they also led to effective solutions such as focusing on customer value and introducing a PSS transition facilitator for the design team. These solutions were adapted to the situations in the respective companies and they partly went beyond the prescriptive measures first introduced. Therefore, the article shows the applicability of prescriptive approaches and methods to detect, understand and alleviate the challenges of PSS design and provision. Further, the article provides broadly applicable learning for industrial companies undergoing this process.
Outcome-based contracts (OBC) refer to agreements between providers and customers where providers are paid based on the outcomes they deliver to customers. OBCs have become common for manufacturing ...firms that are servitising, especially those firms providing advanced services focusing on availability and capability. Whilst many authors acknowledge the importance of understanding risks in OBCs from a provider's perspective, there are relatively few in depth extant studies. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted 24 interviews with 11 companies to explore risks and risk factors in OBCs from the provider's perspective. The case studies reveal that the two major risk categories in OBCs are commercial risk regarding the contract negotiations and contract decisions at the contracting stage, and operational risk regarding the implementation and the delivery of OBCs. Our study identifies 23 risk factors that can lead to commercial risk and operational risk in five dimensions: (i) complexity and (ii) dynamism regarding the context of OBCs, (iii) capability, (iv) alignment and (v) dependency regarding the stakeholders of OBCs. The paper explores the links between these risk factors and commercial and operational risk. In doing so, the paper provides a framework for understanding risk in OBCs.
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