Innovation Consortium PROTEUS : PROduct/service-system Tools for Ensuring User-oriented Service

The Innovation Consortium, PROTEUS, is working to jointly develop new knowledge about how after-sales service can be effectively integrated into business development and industrial organisations, so as to become a source of revenue, rather than a cost to the company. The participants in PROTEUS are interested in understanding, through examples, how to effectively and systematically integrate service development into into their product development and business creation processes.

State-of-the-art:
Current literature on Product/Service-Systems (PSS) includes examples of procedures for the integration of product and service features in product development, but these approaches do not consider a number of key areas for business, such as the commercial considerations, the strategic organisational issues, or the possibilities of collaboration across the value chain. PROTEUS is in a unique position to begin to address some of these issues on a whole branch.