Die Integration von Produkten und Dienstleistungen zu einem nutzenstiftenden Leistungsbündel und das damit einhergehende ökonomische und ökologische Potenzial ist auch heute noch mittel- bzw. unmittelbarer Gegenstand vielfältiger Untersuchungen in Wissenschaft und Praxis. Als Konzept hat die Hybride Wertschöpfung viele Merkmale wie die Interdisziplinarität bei der Leistungserstellung, die Substituierbarkeit von Bestandteilen oder die Ausrichtung am gesamten Lebenszyklus geprägt, welche auch in vielen anderen Konzepten Anwendung finden. Trotzdem hat sie als etablierte Betrachtungsweise bislang keine umfassende Erweiterung erfahren, mit der sie beispielsweise die seit vielen Jahren vorherrschende Digitalisierung von Produkten und Dienstleistungen durch Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie nutzen und integrieren kann. Stattdessen entstehen neue, analoge und teilweise konkurrierende Konzepte, welche die Bildung eines theoretischen Kerns hemmen. Die vorliegende Dissertation adressiert diese Fragestellung und entwickelt einen Ansatz, mit dem die informationsbasierte Integration von Produkten und Dienstleistungen und damit die Nutzung der Digitalisierungspotenziale gelingen kann. Damit folgt die Arbeit dem anwendungs- und schnittstellenorientierten Anspruch der Wirtschaftsinformatik und generiert Ergebnisse in den folgenden Bereichen: (1) Identifikation von Anforderungen an die Entwicklung informationsbasierte hybrider Leistungsbündel, (2) konzeptuelle Zusammenführung der unterschiedlichen Komponenten Produkt und Dienstleistung sowie (3) die prototypische Implementierung einer Plattformlösung zur Unterstützung der Entwicklung entsprechender Leistungsbündel. Die Arbeit leistet somit einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur systemischen Weiterentwicklung des Hybriden Wertschöpfungskonzepts, um als etabliertes Rahmenwerk weiterhin Bestand zu haben und für die Erklärung und Entwicklung neuer Leistungsportfolios verwendbar zu sein.

Purpose - The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what barriers there are when it comes to developing PSS in the process industry for their non-assembled products, both from a provider and customer perspective. Additionally, the purpose is further to investigate how companies can manage these barriers. Method - This master thesis is an exploratory multiple case study with an abductive approach. In total, 25 qualitative interviews were made, with respondents from seven different companies, both companies within the process industry and companies who act as customers to the process industry. The interviews were made during two phases, the first phase was exploratory interviews and the second phase was semi-structured interviews, the collected data were later analyzed with a thematic analysis. Findings - The main findings from this study is divided in five overarching categories, three originating from the interviews provider perspective, and two from the customer perspective, within all overarching categories, barriers and possible ways to manage these are identified. The three provider categories are: Characteristics of the process industry, Market and customer awareness and Extensive transformation required. Additionally, the customers categories are Customers perspectives of servitization and Fundamental management activities. The barriers from these categories has been grouped in a framework after the two constraints time and difficulty. Theoretical implications - This study contribute to the current literature about PSS, which has a clear gap when it comes to PSS for non-assembled products. This study contributes in two ways: Firstly, the findings from this study suggest that some part of the literature about PSS for assembled products could be transferred to products that are non-assembled, above this, the findings also highlighting unique barriers with PSS for non-assembled products. Secondly, this study contribute with clarity about how different barriers should be managed, something that partly lacks in today's PSS literature. Practical implications - With this study, companies within the process industry are provided with support when it comes to investigating new business opportunities, if it is worth for the companies within the process industry to start working with PSS, or if it is not. This study has three important contributions for managers. Firstly, due to the unique characteristics of the process industry, it is suggested that managers broaden the perspective and look wider than just the core-process to find servitization-possibilities. Secondly, managers are provided with useful information regarding PSS which could make them more comfortable when deciding to work with servitization, or not. Thirdly, as the findings shows that the process industry has constrained resources, a framework is presented aiming to aid managers prioritize which barriers to manage. Research limitations - Due to the limited time for this master thesis, only companies within Sweden has been contacted, at each company, a maximum of two persons were contacted.

Climate change is connected to several negative effects on local environments around the globe such as, longer, and more intense droughts, less freshwater supplies, ocean warming, sea level rise, polar ice melting, more intense storms, and rainfall (NASA, 2021).  These problems are mainly due to the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as well as other greenhouse gases (GHG) which cause a similar or stronger climate change effect (WWF, 2021). Practically all climate researchers agree that climate change is caused by human activities (WWF, 2021), as such human activities will have to change to reduce their climate impact. One possible approach to achieve sustainable products is the concept of a circular economy (CE). The proponents of a circular economy describe it as an economic or industrial system which is restorative by its design (EMF, 2010). Currently there is a substantial body of knowledge on how LCA can be used to guide product design in a sustainable direction.  However, as of yet there are limited academic research focused on how environmental assessment can impact the design of Vertical Access Equipment (VAE) and of similar products. This thesis aims to support the VAE sector’s transition towards a CE. The objective of this study was to understand and provide improvement suggestions for the environmental performance and energy use of VAE. This Involved a case study where a LCA was conducted to establish a baseline of four VAE products, a construction hoist, a service lift, an industrial elevator, and a BMU. The results of the initial LCA varied greatly depending on the different products and their use case. Guided by the LCA results, semi-structured workshops were held to find feasible improvement suggestions whose impacts were investigated using LCA once more. Feasible and substantial improvements focusing on the products high impact areas were found for all products. For the construction hoist improvements regarding eliminating waste in the lifting work was most impactful, whilst the service lift required optimizing of maintenance and use of sensors to reduce the maintenance time. For the industrial elevator and the BMU, measures which focused on reducing virgin material extraction showed most promise, such as lifespan extension, remanufacturing, and use of recycled materials. / Mistra REES

Um in der heutigen, von permanenter Veränderung geprägten, Umwelt erfolgreich zu sein, ist es zweifelsfrei notwendig, die eigenen Kompetenzen stetig weiterzuentwickeln und auf dem neusten Wissensstand zu sein. Berufsbegleitende Weiterbildung ist somit ein elementarer Bestandteil des Paradigmas des Lebenslangen Lernens. Mitarbeiter im IT-Management und -Consulting (ITMC) stehen allerdings häufig vor der Herausforderung, passende Angebote zu auszuwählen und das Gelernte erfolgreich umzusetzen. Diese Arbeit adressiert dieses Problem, indem ein Service-System für Weiterbildung im ITMC entwickelt und anwendet wird. Die entwickelten Artefakte bestehen dabei aus Vorgehens- und Prozessmodellen, einem Ordnungsrahmen sowie einer prototypisch implementierten Plattform sowie deren Evaluation. Zusammen bilden sie das Service-System, welches die Frage beantwortet, wie wir heute und in Zukunft mit unserem Wissen umgehen.

To decouple ever-increasing production and the related environmental impacts, collaborative use of products and product-service-systems including rental services can help to intensify the use of products during their designed lifetimes. While these approaches present potential to decrease environmental impacts compared to traditional linear product sales, they need to be assessed with a holistic scope to avoid counterintuitive trade-offs. This study evaluates the potential environment impacts of Husqvarna’s tool rental service with a hypothetical case example from Stockholm, Sweden. The objectives are to analyse the potential environmental impacts of the rental service, to identify hotspots for improvement and to compare the potential impacts of the rental system to a sales alternative. The annual service of one electric chainsaw is analysed using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology with different user scenarios. The potential impacts are analysed for global warming potential, fossil and mineral resource scarcity, marine ecotoxicity and human carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic toxicity. The analysis for the rental system shows that user transport back-and-forth to the rental service is a key contributor to all the environmental impacts analysed, if done by private cars. The comparative results to sales business model indicate that while the rental service can help to reduce the potential impacts in mineral resource scarcity and toxicities due to the lower number of products needed, the user transport may outweigh the potential improvements in global warming potential and fossil resource scarcity, depending on the distances and modes of transport. Different scenarios illustrate that the results are however sensitive to the assumptions made. Based on the results, it can be recommended to optimally place the service close to the users and to take efforts to reduce user transports around the service, to reach the environmental potential of the service. The sensitivity analyses also indicate the importance for accounting detailed data for LCAs for product-service-systems and covering the service holistically in system boundaries. Further studies on user behaviour are suggested to reach more robust analyses on consumer services, to cover also potential rebound effects. / Gemensam konsumtion av produkter kan minska dess miljöpåverkan, sett över produktens livstid, genom intensifiering av produktanvändning och minskad nyproduktion. Även om detta koncept har potential att minska miljöpåverkan, jämfört med traditionell linjär produktförsäljning, måste det granskas på ett systematiskt sätt. Denna studie utvärderar den potentiella miljöpåverkan av ett verktygshyrningssystem av Husqvarna med ett hypotetiskt exempel från Stockholm, Sverige. Målen är att analysera den potentiella miljöpåverkan av hyrestjänsten, identifiera förbättringspunkter och jämföra de potentiella effekterna av hyressystemet med ett försäljningsalternativ. Miljöpåverkan av en motorsåg under ett år är analyserad genom livscykelanalysmetod med olika scenarier. Analysen för hyressystemet visar att den högsta miljöpåverkan kommer från transporten av användare fram och tillbaka till hyresdepån, om transporten är gjord med personbilar. Resultaten indikerar att hyrestjänsten kan bidra till att minska potentiella effekter av mineralresursbrist och toxicitet, jämfört med försäljningsmodellen, på grund av det lägre antal producerade produkter. Hyrestjänsten kan dock riskera att öka växthuseffekten och påverkan på fossilresursbrist, beroende på transportens längd och transportsätt. Olika scenarier illustrerar att resultaten är känsliga för andantagen. Resultaten visar att det kan rekommenderas att placera tjänsten optimalt nära användarna och att försöka minska användartransporten runt tjänsten för att nå tjänstens optimala miljöpotential. Känslighetsanalyserna indikerar också att detaljerade data och omfattande systemgränser är viktiga med LCA studier om produktrelaterade tjänster. Ytterligare studier om användarbeteende föreslås för att nå mer robusta analyser av konsumenttjänster, för att utvärdera även potentiella rekyl-effekter.

To radically increase the value delivered to the customers in the construction industry a concerted effort is needed to develop solutions beyond incremental adjustments. Simply providing add-on services to existing products does not effectively create solutions with enough gains in core customer values. Designing and developing a product service system (PSS) through the adjustment or reconfiguration of existing elements is a challenge on its own, and adding the design of new elements serves to confound the process even further. By realigning all components of a PSS from inception to a function provides an opportunity to escape current product limitations and explore new solutions with potentially higher value. Designing a new PSS solution from scratch comes with added ambiguity in an expanded solution space. The aim of this thesis is to investigate early conceptual phases of PSS innovation within the domain of construction equipment manufacturing. The research included the development and testing of a prototyping method to foster customer co-creation and transdisciplinary design which are considered primary impact factors increasing the value of final PSS solutions. The work was performed in collaboration with a construction equipment manufacturer, conducting a demonstrator project on an electric and autonomous production site. The thesis first depicts how the prototyping method can be implemented to enable stakeholder insights that were previously not accessible through current practices. This leads to the testing of the method in a broader perspective to represent tangible and intangible elements in a way that facilitates concept design decisions in multi-disciplinary settings. The thesis concludes by exploring the limitations on current practices in relation to the adoption and potential use of the method.

The purpose of this study was to explore the required criteria for sharing an electric machine and explore how PSS as a BM could be adapted to share an electric machine. This resulted in the following research questions: 1. From the customers’ perspective, what are the criteria for changing the ownership of an electric machine?  2. How could PSS as a business model be adapted to share an electric machine?  This study was of a qualitative nature based on an abductive approach. This enabled interaction between the theoretical framework and empirical findings. The theory was mainly based on scientific articles and the study was limited to investigating one organisation, which is described as a case study. Empirical data collection was conducted through five semi- structured interviews with customers from Industry A and three unstructured interviews with employees from the case organisation.   In the first research question, the most discussed and mentioned criteria from the customers during the semi-structured interviews were the economic gain, service quality, and accessibility. In the second research question, scenario 3, out of the five presented scenarios, is the one that could mostly be adapted to share an electric machine.

Pre-sale activities of buying and post-sale activities of use are separated by time and judged in two time-place forms. Exchange value being one kind of judgment of desirability, separate from use value. However, traditionally marketing has not fully captured the co-creation of value in use, or therefore, how it affects the perceived value of the offering at purchase. The separation of purchase and use has been shown to create buyer uncertainty at the point of purchase about the future value created in use. Consider the decision to buy a service support contract for capital equipment in which the act and experience of use could continue for up to ten years after the decision to buy. At purchase, buyers may not be certain about the future state of use, i.e. whether or not equipment will fail, or indeed how the service will perform in the event of failure. While uncertainty about the state of use will continue across time, it has been argued uncertainty about how the service will perform may be resolved through repeat use or interaction. Through an exploratory case and a web-based survey of 95 organisational buyers of Product Service Systems (PSS) in capital equipment markets, this thesis finds customer-provider co-capability, which facilitates service performance in use, mediates the customer’s perceived risk of re-purchasing. As a result, this thesis makes a contribution to B2B marketing in identifying how value of the offering at purchase is affected by future customer-provider co-capability in use.

Driven by the highly cyclical nature of their increasingly commoditised product offerings, many capital goods manufacturers are seeing the benefits of delivering services integrated with their core product offerings. Whilst existing research is almost unanimous in advocating the value of a servitization strategy, understanding how these product-service systems (PSSs) can be developed and delivered remains a significant challenge. The closely related PSS field, which has its heritage in the environmental and social science disciplines, is more mature in this area and a number of models have been proposed. The research reported within this thesis contributes to knowledge by investigating whether the approaches to PSS development, reported within the PSS literature, reflects the PSS development practice of servitized manufacturers. More specifically, soft systems methodology was used to explore the delivery of PSSs within the UK railway industry in order to gain an understanding of the implications for developing new PSSs. With this understanding, the existing approaches to PSS development were evaluated with respect to one servitized manufacturer through an in-depth single case study. The findings highlighted a number of significant differences between the practice of the servitized manufacturer and the literature. A survey was used to investigate whether the differences were generalisable to a larger sample of servitized manufacturers. The findings point towards the simplification of the reported phases within PSS development and the inclusion of a number of previously unreported processes and activities. Based on these results a new model of PSS development is proposed to better reflect the practice of servitized manufacturers. The model, consisting of four phases and seventeen processes, was operationalised in the form of a workbook and tested through application. Applying the workbook resulted in the successful creation of a number of new PSS concepts.

Although they lead to several potential sustainability benefits, product-service systems are not intrinsically sustainable. Therefore, this thesis investigates the factors designers should consider in order to ensure sustainable results. A systematic literature review on product-service system and sustainability is combined with three interviews with product-service system providers. The results are analysed through the application of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development. The results of the systematic literature review show that there is no unified definition of sustainable product-service system and multiple approaches to address sustainability in product-service system design. By adopting the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, a definition of sustainable product-service system and a list of design criteria are developed. This thesis suggests which overarching aspects product-service system designers should consider to integrate a strategic sustainability perspective. The outcome of this thesis supports designers in understanding what a sustainable product-service system could be and what elements it should embed. By combining the definition and the list of criteria, designers can apply a systematic and strategic approach to integrate sustainability in product-service system offerings.