Service and manufacturing knowledge in product-service systems: a case study

In the developing Product-Service Systems (PSS) field, an emerging research challenge is supporting the PSS design activity. This paper presents a case study in which manufacturing and service knowledge is captured and classified in order to support the design activity. A knowledge capture exercise took place to identify manufacturing and service knowledge applied in the design process. A design knowledge capture exercise led to the creation of a design process model. The case study reports on the proposed structure for the application of manufacturing and service knowledge to a conceptual and a detailed design task. The knowledge framework is implemented using the Protégé knowledge base editor. PSS design requires an integrated system level approach to design, and therefore a system level knowledge structure is required. The detailed case study indicates where manufacturing and service knowledge is applied in the design activity, which is divided into ‘conceptual’ and ‘detailed’ stages.