What Happens to Integrated Product Development Models with Product/Service-System Approaches?

Integrated Product Development (IPD) has traditionally focused on the development activities relating to physical technological artefacts. With the advent of business approaches for manufacturing firms based on providing customers the utility of integrated products and services – a term dubbed ‘product/service-systems (PSS)’ – companies need to extend their activities to include new dimensions of development. Within the paradigm of mass production and consumption, traditional product-oriented business strategies regarded physical technological artefacts (products) as the mediators of customer value. Value was based on the exchange of products between a providing company and a receiving customer. The more products the company could sell, the more revenue it generated. At the point of sale the ownership and responsibility of the product was transferred from company to customer. A customer would buy a product because it represented potential valuable benefits. Several researchers [MOR-03] have pointed to the problems of this business strategy as: 1) it links companies’ economic growth with the consumption of natural resources; 2) it delegates the responsibility of a product’s use, maintenance and disposal to customers that are often oblivious to proper behaviour, as well as, 3) it allows little opportunity for customers to influence the design to best suit their individual needs and preferences. PSS approaches are business strategies where companies provide value to customers by supporting and enhancing the utility of products throughout their entire life cycle. This strategy represents a range of opportunities for companies that may ameliorate some of the problems listed above.