Product-Service Systems Development and Management – New Trend in Servicization

Today, many manufacturing companies are moving towards the integration of products and services in order to achieve competitive Product Service System (PSS) that better satisfy customer needs (through innovative customization actions). Furthermore, the actual market dynamics push manufacturers to enriched and extend the products portfolio by their integration with adequate services, while the new product development approaches may require some changes and adaptation to this new design and marketing behaviour. This generate a new business model by the adaptation to the service development. The aim of this paper is to present an analysis based on the state-of-the-art regarding the new perspectives of Product Service System (PSS) development, design and engineering. In addition, some managerial aspects will be debated to underline organizational aspects and changes required when the new business model is adopted. The analysis done is supported by an example of good practice and experience gained by a research institute and university collaboration, both located in Romania. The research aims to discover and describe feasible ways for PSSs development and providing them on the market, in the context of a university and a research institute collaboration (supported by the open innovation approach). In this context, the structure of the presented paper consists of the following chapters: (1) Introduction – the new business environment specifics; (2) Actual trends for servicization; (3) Debate on the difference between physical - tangible product and service – intangible products (presented through a case study); (4) Conclusions. The research result is the basis of the strategy for the PSS development in the case of an organization that operate in the research field (research institute for welding and material testing).