The Smart Industrial Service System as a New Type of Smart PSS for Complex Industrial Context: A Case Study in the Mining Industry

Servitization has prompted industrial companies to develop smart services for their manufactured products in order to maximize their economic value. The use of smart technologies proposed the product service into a more advanced smart product-service system (smart PSS). However, because current research on smart PSS is primarily focused on developing the service potential from a single core product, this poses a problem for customers who need more holistic solutions in complex contexts. Particularly for the energy and mining sectors, which do not manufacture complex products. The concept of a smart industrial service system (SISS) is proposed in this paper to analyze the various service requirements for the complex energy and mining contexts. Smart technologies bring new access to the interconnection and management of more macro contexts. A brief description of the SISS framework is provided, along with information on its conception, characteristics, elements, and explored design mode. Different from the conventional service blueprint that mainly considers the customer journey. The study emphasizes the importance of considering the activities of social and environmental stakeholders, and also expounds on the necessity of meeting the service requirements of different levels of the industrial context. A novel smart industrial service innovation (SISI) blueprint is also developed to assist the service components design. The proposed SISS model is validated in a real-life coal mining industrial case, and the SISI blueprint design method is also compared with classical methods such as traditional service blueprint. The limitations and possible future research directions are also described at the end of the study.