Why product service systems development is special

The design and development of product service systems (PSS) is a complex process that brings together product, software and service engineering. A fully integrated PSS calls for significant collaboration among the different engineering disciplines along the entire design and development process which can pose several challenges to the development team. Therefore, when developing a PSS, companies should take into account the special characteristics and complexities that are relevant in the context of PSS. However, in practice companies often follow their traditional development processes and simply design a service around their existing products. This way, many PSS offerings do not live up to their full potential. In order to overcome this issue practitioners need to know what makes PSS development special. By reviewing existing literature on PSS development, this paper identifies and describes the special characteristics of PSS development in contrast to traditional products or services.