Analysis and Design Methodology for Recognizing Opportunities and Difficulties for Product-based Services

Recently, manufacturing companies have been moving into product-based service businesses in addition to providing the products themselves. However, it is not easy for engineers in manufacturing companies to create new service businesses because their skills, mental models, design processes, and organization are optimized for product design and not for service design. In order to design product-based services more effectively and efficiently, systematic design methodologies suitable for the service businesses are necessary. Based on the case analysis of more than 40 Japan-US product-based services, this paper introduces a product-based service design methodology called DFACE-SI. DFACE-SI consists of five steps from service concept generation to service business plan description. Characteristic features of DFACE-SI include (1) visualization tools to facilitate stakeholders' recognition of new opportunities and difficulties, and (2) service design patterns and failure mode checklists extracted from the service case analysis to assist in designing and evaluating service concepts and schemes. We apply DFACE-SI to a pilot project and illustrate its effectiveness.