Business challenges today are becoming more numerous, and more urgent. Many companies are expanding beyond their traditional product and market boundaries, while others are forming new alliances or outsourcing supporting functions to other producers. The concept of product-service system (PSS), analysed in this study, has the potential to improve companies' competitiveness and provide new business opportunities. It gives the possibility to find new profit centres for companies, to establish closer and longer relationships with customers, to organise feedback from the sale and use phase back to the design phase, to apply a systems approach that widens the scope from one company to a chain of companies collaborating on providing a function to the customer, and to incorporate environmental considerations into the system design.

This feasibility study presented the PSS concept to a range of Swedish companies from different industry branches and engaged them in discussions about the pros and cons of the concept and about the methodologies, potential benefits and foreseeable problems with the introduction of the concept to business.

The main conclusion of this feasibility study is that the product-service system concept seems to be a feasible business strategy, which could be adopted in several industry sectors. The study also revealed three groups of companies, which are familiar with the functional sales idea and who also have the potential for further development in this area. Based on that, three models for introducing the PSS concept to these groups of companies were developed. The study indicated that the PSS concept requires a new way of strategic business thinking, but also that it could utilise some of the existing practices in companies as a starting point.

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Last updated: 13 November, 2008