The maturity of smart home technologies and wireless capabilities, increased accessibility through mass-market availability of internet is making the feasibility of the smart home more realistic. The added incentives to better control utilities and communications to make lives more sustainable, has also driven the growth in the market. This thesis investigates the advantages of the smart home both for the environment and user. Outlining opportunities for business by finding gaps in the market is to better synthesise products and services to improve the user experience. A literature review, market research and ethnographic research was undertaken to understand the current state of the smart home industry and identify the main stakeholders that impact the user. A customer journey map was created to visualise the user process and highlighted problem areas. A survey showed users were most concerned about quality, functions and saving energy and money. The survey perceptions on interactions with technology also shed light into the necessity for robust and reliable technology and adaptable products and services. The final outcome is a prototype model to improve user experience, including stakeholder influence, user needs and the connections between different stakeholders from pre-sale, sale and after-sale.

Many literatures have shown that needs last longer than any specific solutions, so understanding of customer needs seems a crucial factor in early Product-Service System (PSS) development. Nowadays, many western companies, especially manufacturing focused companies, have realized the difficulty of understanding market needs. In this thesis, a new Value-Driven Needfinding methodology for manufacturing company to apply in certain markets was investigated. To further demonstrate the implementation of the proposed methodology, a case study involving Volvo Construction Equipment exploring value-orient needs in Chinese market is showed. At the end, by providing the scenarios comparison, a PSS conceptual design will be illustrated to show the utilization of the customer needs, then opportunities for company future provision towards sustainability based on early PSS development will be discussed. / Providing added value to standalone products by adding services is at the core of Product-Service Systems (PSS) offered in manufacturing companies. Providing PSS requires a change not only in the way products are sold, but also in the way they are designed and developed. The way of understanding and capturing customer needs often fall outside the early phase of designing integration solution in traditional manufacturing company. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the needfinding for early phase of PSS design, methods and tools proposed to improve the need collection and analysis process. This academic work was performed through the close collaboration with Volvo Construction Equipment which is looking for opportunities to provide Product-Service System in the Chinese market. The thesis group firstly reviewed theory of needfinding, and then the importance of value was brought out. The methodology of Value-Driven Needfinding (VDN) was introduced to facilitate the early PSS development. By deriving needs from an adding value standpoint, this methodology is not only focused only on needs intended as “Voice of the customer” but rather as needs expressed as “Value Adding Activities”. Thus, these value-based needs can reveal some functions for potential system solution development. A case study involved with Chinese customers’ needs is described to demonstrate the application of VDN. Two scenarios comparison were presented to evaluate the sustainable influence between provision of current solutions and new PSS solution. During discussion part, the application of VDN, the Chinese market preferences and the contribution of VDN for early PSS design from sustainable perspectives are discussed. At the end, three conclusions supported the contirbution of VDN applied for manufacturing company to carry out PSS development at early stage are showed. / 0736278002, Pohlmesgatan 27 B lgh 1208 371 40

Manufacturing companies have traditionally focused their design and development activities on realizing technical and engineered aspects of physical artifacts based on performance requirements. The ever-changing business climate, with its increased pace during the past decades, has forced industries to continuously innovate their approach toward the development of new products. Pressured also by global competition, manufacturing companies need to reconsider the traditional concept of realizing value via goods production, and shift towards realizing value through product-service combinations. Companies have begun to recognize that gaining competitive advantage and expanding market shares is not achievable purely through continuous technical improvements. Rather, it is necessary to develop a closer relationship to the customer to gain a deeper understanding of expectations, needs, and perceived value. From a development perspective, the overarching problem within complex systems such as those in which cars, aircraft, and excavators are manufactured, or healthcare is provided, is that the focus on customer value is likely to become blurred since it is difficult to understand the impact a change in any single component in the overall system has on value, and to determine a new function’s impact on future scenarios. The main goals of this thesis are to provide an understanding of key challenges when considering the value different design alternatives provide in the conceptual phases of product development taking the automotive industry as case study, and to explore how to support a multi-disciplinary design team in making value-conscious decisions when dealing with new product-service offerings. The research approach has involved data collection through participation in, and facilitation of, product-service design workshops in the automotive industry. Also, it has involved follow-up meetings and interviews, as well as a review of literature on state-of-the-art methods in early conceptual design phases, which describes the advantages and disadvantages of the different frameworks. The primary finding of the study is that determination of the impact of different PSS design options on customer value becomes more challenging since new elements are introduced (e.g., new business models and services). The design team requires more holistic competences in order to more fully understand changing contexts; and new methods and tools are needed in order to establish a base to define, discuss and assess what “uncontested customer value” is, and link it to the different product-service elements of the system. Secondly, this thesis proposes a conceptual approach for value simulation and assessment of different design options, where the iterative use of personas and scenario generation is combined with value modeling and computer-based simulation techniques, enabling a quick “what-if” analysis of the various options, facilitating the identification of promising combinations of product and service elements that provide higher customer value.

Global challenges such as increasingly competitive markets, low-cost competition, shorter lead time demands, and high quality/value output are transforming the business model of the company to focus beyond the performance requirements. In order to meet these challenges, companies are highly concerned with the customer perceived value, which is to connect the product with the customer in a better way and become more proactive to fulfil the customer needs, via function-oriented business models and Product-Service Systems. In literature, the conceptual phase is distinguished as the most critical phase of the product development process. Many authors have recognized the improvement of design in the conceptual phase as the mean to deliver a successful product in the market. At the decision gate, where concepts are selected for further development, the design team needs knowledge/data about the long-term consequences of their early decision, to see how changes in design propagate to the entire lifecycle of the product. The main goal of the thesis is to describe how the design of Product-Service Systems in the conceptual phase can be improved through the use of a data-driven approach. The latter provides an opportunity to enhance decision making and to provide better support at the early development phase. The study highlights how data are managed and used in current industrial setting and indicates the room for improvement with current practices. The thesis further provides guidelines to efficiently use data into the modelling and simulation activities to increase design knowledge. As a result of this study, a data-driven approach emerged to support the early design decision.  The thesis presents initial descriptive study findings from the empirical investigations, showing a model-based approach that creates awareness about the value of a new design concept, thus acting as a key enabler to use data in design. This will create a link between the product engineering characteristic to the high-level attributes of customer satisfaction and provider’s long-term profitability. The preliminary results indicate that the application of simulation models to frontload the early design stage creates awareness about how performance can lead to value creation, helping multidisciplinary teams to perform quick trade-off and what-if analysis on design configurations. The proposed framework shows how data from various sources are used through a chain of simulations to understand the entire product lifecycle. The proposed approach holds a potential to improve the key performance indicators for Product-Service Systems development: lead time, design quality, cost and most importantly deliver a value-added product to the customer.

The digital revolution has led to a drastic transformation of electronics manufacturing industries globally. A growing number of companies are continually investing in digital technologies to remain competitive. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Big data, Robotics, etc. and smart devices have been widely adopted to improve efficiency, connectivity, and productivity of businesses. To cope with increased competition and customer demands, electronics manufacturing companies have broadened their interest in service innovation. However, companies pursuing a servitization strategy often lack an established framework i.e. method and tools to design new services. Besides, research indicates that existing frameworks with the potential to support this development are not contextualized to the electronics manufacturing industry. This design study, therefore, evaluates and proposes how the Integrative PSS approach can be adapted to suit the electronics manufacturing context to support services. The findings suggest that some models used in this approach were found to be unfavorable in the development of services. In such cases, the study contributes by providing suggestions on what models to adapt and how in the integrative PSS approach to support electronic manufacturing companies in their servitization process. The artifact is an exaptation since a known solution is extended to solve a problem in a new context and of the type instantiation.

Background: Fast furniture is a growing trend similar to fast fashion and fast food, implying that manufacturers produce large quantities of inexpensive furniture. At the same time, consumers use the furniture shorter and replace it more frequently. Fast furniture relies on high resource consumption, outsourced production, and furniture design that makes it necessary to replace it more often. This causes a decrease in quality and an increase in produced quantities. Most of the furniture worldwide is landfilled as it is not recyclable due to low-quality materials. One potential solution is implementing Circular Economic practices, including furniture rental as an alternative way of consumption. Consumer acceptance of this model is scarcely researched, but the formation of consumers' attitudes and intentions has been the subject of publications in other consumption contexts. The recent literature is reviewed, and a research framework was built based on the Theory of Reasoned Action and additional intrapersonal barriers and drivers. Purpose: This research aimed to explain the relationship between intrapersonal barriers and drivers with attitude and behavioral intention towards furniture rental. Further, it was aimed to show which furniture categories are most likely to be rented. Method: A quantitative approach deploying a self-administered online survey was chosen. 235 usable responses were gathered, which were analyzed using PLS-SEM to assess the hypothesized relationships. Conclusion: The findings show that the overall attitude towards furniture rental is positive. Trend orientation and perceived risk are the most influential antecedents of attitude and behavioral intention. Supporting the Theory of Reasoned Action, attitude is the strongest predictor of behavioral intention. Perceived sustainability value, perceived economic value, and materialism also significantly influence the intention to rent furniture. Familiarity with the Sharing Economy shows no significant influence. The study contributes to the existing literature on consumer intentions to use alternative consumption. A new research model was developed based on existing theory and literature. Managers can use the findings to alter, adapt, and build their furniture rental service offerings.

The increasing use of natural resources and the pollution it causes calls for new ways of addressing customer needs. Additionally, a more uncertain and complex world also presents new challenges. In this thesis, these new challenges are tackled through inter and transdisciplinary research, which require more interaction across disciplines to tackle complex phenomena. The manner in which companies address customer needs starts from the designing (a multiplestakeholder perspective) of offerings where companies rely on different types of support (guidelines, standards, methods and tools). In this thesis, these offerings, include products, services, systems, and solutions. This plays an important role in the use of natural resources and its impact on the environment. In this Licentiate, I present results to show initial cues on how to design resource-efficient offerings, and more specifically their analysis and evaluation in the early stages of the design process. This type of offerings is suggested to be crucial for the circular economy, which can be understood as a paradigm shift towards sustainability. In this paradigm shift, designing is carried out by taking into account reuse, remanufacture and recycling of products as strategies by multiple stakeholders and companies. Other strategies include providing services, a function or a solution through dematerialization and transmaterialization. The methods used in this research are narrative and systematic literature reviews, thematic analysis and a case study. The results show a lack of interdisciplinary research in the academic literature in subjects relevant to the design of resource-efficient offerings. The results also show a need to clarify what transdisciplinary research entails. Moreover, current practice shows that support used by companies needs to consider several factors for it to be useful, for example, the vision of the company, participation of potential users of the support and everyday operations, among other characteristics. Finally, more practical support coming from academia is necessary to improve its use in industry. / <p>Information om opponent och seminarium saknas</p>

Increasing awareness of anthropogenic impacts on the planet has lead to efforts to reduce negative environmental impacts in product development for several decades. Benefits to companies who focus on sustainability initiatives have been put forth more recently, leading to many efforts to incorporate sustainability considerations in their product innovation processes. The majority of current sustainability considerations in industry constrain design space by emphasizing reduced material and energy flows across the product’s life cycle. However, there is also an opportunity to use awareness of sustainability to bring attention to new facets of design space and to drive innovation. Specifically there is an opportunity for product-service systems (PSS) to be a vehicle through which sustainability-driven innovation occurs. A framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD) provides the basis for understanding sustainability in this work, and provides clarity with regard to how to think about sustainable products and service innovations. The “backcasting” approach included in this framework also provides insight into how incremental and radical approaches could be aligned within the product innovation working environment. This thesis explores how sustainability considerations can be better integrated into existing product innovation working environments in order to drive innovation processes within firms, with a specific emphasis on opportunities that occur as sustainability knowledge leads to innovation through a product-service system approach. It endeavors to contribute to both theory development within the emerging sustainable PSS design research area, and also to advance the state of practice within industry by connecting dots between the state of theory and the state of practice. Society’s opportunity to become more sustainable and industry’s desire for innovation in order to lead to or increase profitability are often in conflict. However, this thesis argues that knowledge of global social and ecological sustainability can be used to drive innovation processes, and that there are win-win opportunities that can often be achieved through a PSS approach. There is some, but not sufficient, support for the inclusion of sustainability considerations in the product innovation process, and even fewer tools to support the use of sustainability to drive innovation. In response, an approach to providing support that brings together the FSSD and various approaches to systems modeling and simulation is presented. Opportunities to use sustainability-friendly attributes of existing products through a PSS-approach are also presented.

The increased sophistication of customer needs pushes manufacturers toward integrated offerings where physical products and intangible services collaboratively generate value, also known as Product-Service Systems (PSS). This shifts the focal point from product performance to overall system functionality. However, this naturally increases the importance of requirements linked to the operation and the system's behavior, e.g., reliability, safety, and flexibility. These kinds of requirements that dictate how a system should behave and operate in its context are called non-functional requirements. However, most manufacturing firms have a legacy of focusing mainly on functional requirements.  Alongside this trend, there has been an increasing affordability and availability of data. However, how this data can be utilized for value creation remains a question for the industry. Operational data can serve as a vital source of information about the PSS behavior and value delivery process. Since non-functional requirements depend on the operational context for measuring their performance, operational data can thus provide new insights.  This thesis aims to study the motivation for and challenges of working with non-functional requirements and value within Digital PSS design by manufacturing firms. Firstly, the management of non-functional requirements in the design process is studied. The empirical research determined that there are six challenges that a design team and organization face when working with non-functional requirements. The challenges highlight that non-functional requirements’ fuzzy and intangible aspects make them easy to neglect and hard to include in design and decision-making. A state-of-the-art review is conducted to identify possible remedies. Onward, the intersection between data and value is explored. An overarching classification of operational data and how these can contribute to different forms of value creation is presented based on previous literature. Further, the analysis shows what kind of operational data can be collected using three levels of granularity. Experiences and reflections from multiple companies at different stages in their servitization journey are gathered to complement and expand the perspective on operational data and value.

Problem: Public procurement constitutes a large part of the global economy, accounting for 15% of GDP. But it is also responsible for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions and consumes vast amounts of raw materials as it is strongly focused on linear products. A more circular alternative is the procurement of Product-Service Systems (PSS), which combine products and services. However, research shows that Circular Public Procurements, such as procurements of PSS, are more complex and require deeper procurer-supplier interaction. Yet, the procurer-supplier interaction in the context of public procurement of PSS has not been empirically explored.  Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how the interaction between the procurer and supplier throughout the public procurement process can facilitate public procurement of PSS. Method: A qualitative multiple-case study was conducted, exploring four cases of public procurements of PSS between Swedish municipalities and Swedish private companies. Seven semi-structured interviews with interviewees from both sides were conducted. The data was triangulated with case-specific procurement documents.  Results: Procurer-supplier interaction was found to be crucial for procurers and suppliers throughout the public procurement process to make PSS happen and to improve its quality. In both, the preparation and utilisation phase of public procurement, the interaction can bring benefits for procurers as well as for suppliers, thus facilitating PSS.