An integration of function- and affordance-based methods for product-service system utilizing finite state automata

Manufacturing and service sectors are evolving towards achieving a design of a systemically integrated product-service system (PSS). While there exist limitations, we propose an integrative design architecture and a design method for PSSs. For the integrated architecture, our study adopts the concepts of functions and affordances as fundamentals of PSS designs to achieve both the product and life-cycle related service design specifications. Also, finite state automata is applied to the modeling of the integrated PSS to add computations into the method. While the discussions on an automotive system shows the method's advancement as a PSS design tool, it is expected that this study will provide engineering designers and managers with a structured method that can be consistently applied through different PSSs life cycles.