Product lifecycle and its management in PSS

In the PSS context, the meaning and composition of products have shifted from being mere artefacts sold to generate revenue to becoming a complex system comprising tangible products and intangible services provided to the customer (Terzi et al., 2010). In line with this, the value proposition of manufacturing companies does not end when delivering a product to the customer. Rather, the value must be created after the sales and

throughout the life cycle (Russo et al., 2016). Therefore, a key success factor when developing products for PSS is to design the product from a life-cycle perspective by considering all of the product’s lifecycle phases (Sundin et al., 2009). However, with the increasing complexity of products, processes, value creation networks and IT environments in the PSS context, managing all the information from the entire product lifecycle (PLC) has become challenging (Stark et al., 2014). Given the current changing business environment, product lifecycle management (PLM) can be viewed as a strategic weapon that enables a company to provide added value to customers and thus gain a competitive advantage over competitors (Golovatchev and Budde, 2007).

In general, the entire product lifecycle (PLC) can be divided into three major phases based on different states of the product (Kiritsis et al., 2003; Kiritsis, 2011; Stark, 2011; Vila and Albiñana, 2016): the beginning-of-life (BOL), middle-of-life (MOL), and the end-of-life (EOL). I will go through the key activities involved in each stage here.

Normally, design and manufacturing sub-phases are included in the beginning-of-life (BOL), where the product concept is generated, designed, and physically realized. In this phase, the product is in the manufacturing company’s hands within the boundaries of the company. Design is a recursive and iterative intellectual activity in which designers and engineers try to find solutions for given problems through product, process, and plant design. Thus, designers and engineers are generally measured by efficacy. Compared to that, manufacturing is a repetitive transactional-based activity where the primary focus is to concretize the decisions taken by others, thus manufacturing personnel are generally measured in terms of efficiency (Terzi et al., 2010).

The middle-of-life (MOL) phase includes distribution (external logistic), use and support service (in terms of repair and maintenance), in which the product is distributed, used, and supported by customers and/or service providers. In the MOL phase, the product is beyond the boundaries of the manufacturing company and in the hands of the final customer or the service providers, such as maintenance actors and logistic providers, implying that the ‘real life’ of the product is dealt with in this phase (Terzi et al., 2010).

Sometimes sales also belong to MOL (Vila and Albiñana, 2016).

Finally, the product reaches the end-of-life (EOL) phase when it is no longer useful, or the product no longer satisfies its users, whether they are the initial purchasers or second-hand owners. During the EOL phase, the product can be processed by reusing some of its components for the same purpose for which they are conceived, by remanufacturing the product into a sound working condition through disassembly, repair, replace and reassembly, by recycling the waste materials for the original or other purposes, and by disposing of the product in a landfill or incineration plant, etc. (Stark, 2011).

Being a business strategy, the idea of product lifecycle management (PLM) is to efficiently manage the product through all phases of its lifecycle (Kiritsis, 2011; Stark, 2011; Wegst and Ashby, 2002) to support efficiency, flexibility, and efficacy in the business processes (Terzi et al., 2010). It is an integrated approach to manage the

product-related information throughout the entire lifecycle of the product through a combination of process, organization, methodology, and technology to support the full lifecycle of the product and accelerate business performance (Kurkin and Januska, 2010; Saaksvuori and Immonen, 2004; Stark, 2011). PLM not only enables a company to reduce product-related costs and improve product quality (Miller, 2007; Patrick, 2008; Stark, 2011), but also directly enhances customer satisfaction and indirectly increases market share by shortening the time-to-market and providing more complex products (Affonso, Cheutet, Ayadi, and Haddar, 2013; Teresko, 2004). In each phase of the product lifecycle (PLC), the objectives of PLM are different. For instance, PLM focuses on product design and production quality improvement in the beginning-of-life phase, whereas the improvement of product availability, reliability, and maintainability is the focus of in the middle-of-life phase (Yoo et al., 2016).

Some studies have been conducted from the PLC perspective in the PSS context (Aurich et al., 2009; Kjaer et al., 2016; Sundin et al., 2009). Considering customer, manufacturer, and product life cycle specific aspects, Aurich, Wolf, Siener, and Schweitzer (2009) presented a lifecycle-oriented configuration framework of PSS with seven core elements, including the physical product, the product life cycle, services, the impact of PLC on the physical product, the impact of services on the physical product, technical configuration, and service configuration. Although the framework was applied successfully in an exemplary case in a cultivator for loosening compacted soil by winegrowers, corresponding software was still required to further develop and realize this framework.

Sundin, Lindahl, and Ijomah (2009) conducted case studies about product redesign in three different manufacturing companies in Sweden to explain how they adapted their physical products for PSS. They found that compared to traditional products, PSS placed new requirements on products such as easy-to-perform maintenance, repair, and remanufacturing. Although the three companies were from quite different industries, including manufacturers of forklift trucks, soil compactors and household appliances, all of them adapted for the MOL and EOL phases of the products when redesigning the products, i.e., considering the maintenance, repairs and remanufacturing, and this led to cost reductions and an increase in profits.

Combining a systematic literature review of 75 publications with expert consultations, Kjaer, Pagoropoulos, Schmidt, and McAloone (2016) identified a set of PSS characteristics that might challenge the evaluation of the environmental performance of PSS when conducting life cycle assessments. They distinguished three relevant scopes to apply a life cycle assessment (i.e., to evaluate options within the PSS itself, to compare the PSS with an alternative, and to model the actual contextual changes caused by the PSS), derived three challenges when conducting life cycle assessments within the above-mentioned scopes. This included identifying and defining the reference system, defining functional units, and setting system boundaries. Suggestions were provided to overcome these challenges based on the literature. However, most of the publications reviewed by them were conceptual papers, indicating that empirical studies on PSS from a PLC perspective were limited (Kjaer et al., 2016). This motivated the author of this dissertation

to conduct studies on PSS from a PLC perspective, which are addressed in sub research questions 3 to 6, and are reflected in Publications III, IV, and V.