Evaluating the interactions of multi-dimensional value for sustainable product-service system with grey DEMATEL-ANP approach

Thus far, researches related to sustainable product-service system (PSS) largely investigate the interrelationships of factors with a focus on consumer, and concentrate on the requirement identification for PSS design; few address the interactions of multiple value from different stakeholders in the sustainable PSS implementation. In this paper, the multi-dimensional value elements for sustainable PSS are recognized to maximize the mutual value among stakeholders and realize sustainable benefits in PSS, considering customer value perceptions, customer service requirements, sustainability potentials and partnership establishment simultaneously. Then the interdependencies of value elements are prioritized with a hybrid model, which incorporates Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), Analytical Network Process (ANP) and grey theory. In accordance with cause-effect relationship, strength of interactions, as well as influential weight of criteria, the predominant value factors and the improvement direction for sustainable PSS are identified. The results of the present work can provide the decision-makers in manufacturing enterprise with theoretical guideline to implement sustainable PSS successfully from the perspective of multi-dimensional value coordination among different stakeholders.     

Comprehensive understanding of smart product service system from multi-dimension and multi-perspective: An innovative service model for Customer-product Interaction Life Cycle (CILC)

With the improvement of living standards and the rapid development of the Internet, customers gradually pursue personalized smart products and services. Traditional smart product service system is mainly aimed at the service of customers and products in one or several interactive links. Furthermore, in the mass personalization model, in order to give full play to the customer experience and participation satisfaction, it is necessary to study the smart product service system based on the interaction between customers and products. However, there is a gap in the research on integrating the whole life cycle of customer-product interaction. In order to meet this industrial need, the innovation of this paper is to construct an innovative service model for Customer-product Interaction Life Cycle (CILC) and analyse the service impact factors and countermeasures using fuzzy DEMATEL method. The study can provide enterprises with the top-level framework and decision-making of smart product service system based on CILC, and realize the effective integration, expansion and value-added of service resources. At the same time, the application of this research methods can shorten the distance between customers and products, improve customer satisfaction.     

A methodological framework with rough-entropy-ELECTRE TRI to classify failure modes for co-implementation of smart PSS

Smart PSS (product-service system) has been transcending the scope of traditional PSS through ICTs (information and communication technologies). The co-implementation is a specific way of co-creation to generate value for customer and supplier in smart PSS. Meanwhile, the service failures in co-implementation can bring about service paradox. As such, three key research questions, including the construction of co-implementation of smart PSS, the extension of risk factors in FMECA and the category of identified failure modes, are put forward and conquered by a proposed methodological framework. First, in order to construct the co-implementation of smart PSS involving customer and supplier, the PCN (process-chain-network) diagram with direct interaction, surrogate interaction and independent handling is employed to reflect the nature of interaction. Second, since that the highly complexity of co-implementation of smart PSS can lead to more huge risk, an extended-FMECA (failure mode effect and criticality analysis) sheet is formulated by considering the adaptation of autonomy. Third, to handle the uncertainty of expert judgments more reasonably and determine the weights of risk factors without additional information, a hybrid approach integrating rough-entropy-ELECTRE TRI is proposed to classify failure modes into ordinal classes, so that decision-makers can swiftly access them. This proposed methodological framework also is illustrated by the co-implementation of smart fridge-service system, in which the feasibility and superiority are verified by analysing comparative results.     

A synthetical development approach for rehabilitation assistive smart product–service systems: A case study

Digital transformation (DT), the combination of information, computing, communication and connectivity technologies, which has triggered an effective upgrade of different aspects of market strategy, customer experience etc. Nowadays, rehabilitation assistive devices (RADs) are evolving to be more digital, intelligent and personalized. Digitalization and servitization have fostered to an emerging business model—the smart product–service system (Smart PSS). Therefore, DT of the RADs’ industry advocates not only the design of products and functions, the more important is the management of service processes and resource integration. With the increase in the elderly and disabled population, the requirement for RADs is becoming more urgent. However, research on Smart PSS for RAD is still limited. The rehabilitation assistive smart product–service systems (RASPSS) was introduced into the development of RADs based on the “Design and Management of DT” strategy through the service design of assistive devices and user requirements analysis. Further, an integrated design of RAD and Smart PSS has been created, a development method of RASPSS proposed, the theoretical model of the Smart PSS based on RADs built. To specify the service framework, this case study discusses the development of a home rehabilitation assistive system for femoral stem fracture patients. This paper evaluates the usability of the system, the results of which prove usability and effectiveness of the RASPSS development method. The RASPSS development model is designed to meet needs of stakeholders, improve the user rehabilitation experience, promote the service innovation of Smart PSS, bring certain market benefits of rehabilitation aids and create social value.     

An integrated framework of user experience-oriented smart service requirement analysis for smart product service system development

The rapid deployment of digital technologies drives the conventional product service system (PSS) to shift into a new paradigm known as smart PSS. Empowered with smart capabilities, smart PSS has great potential in creating positive user experience (UX). The requirements analysis is an essential task for successful development of smart PSS with strong UX. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of research on the requirement analysis of smart PSS by incorporating smart-enabled UX perspective. Hence, this paper proposes a framework of user experience-oriented smart service requirement (UXO-SSR) analysis for smart PSS development. At first, the relevant factors (e.g., user personas and activity journey) are integrated to conceptualize the UX in smart PSS context. Second, a four-phase model is proposed for identifying UXO-SSR, which can provide an effective tool for acquiring UX requirements of smart PSS from holistic perspective. Third, a novel asymmetric trapezium cloud-based uncertain linguistic BWM approach is developed to evaluate the priority of the identified UXO-SSRs. The approach can appropriately handle the hybrid uncertainties (i.e., hesitancy, fuzziness and randomness) of linguistic evaluation information, thereby improving the accuracy of evaluation results. Finally, a case study of smart sleep service system is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of the proposed framework.     

Configuration optimization of service solution for smart product service system under hybrid uncertain environments

Configuration of service solution is recognized as a crucial task for smart product service system (PSS) development, which provides an effective way to meet dynamic customer requirements. New smart attributes, broader stakeholder value and hybrid uncertainty occur inherently in the service solution configuration for smart PSS. These emerging characteristics lead to urgent updating need of the existing approaches to service solution configuration optimization. Therefore, the current study proposes a systematic approach to optimization of smart product service (SPS) solution configuration, aiming to achieve the best smart capability and value symbiosis among stakeholders of the configured SPS schemes. In the proposed approach, a new attributes system is proposed to describe the smart service module instances, and then employed as criteria to determine the configuration parameters. A novel rough-fuzzy data envelopment analysis (DEA) method is proposed to obtain the configuration parameters of each service module, with objective of effectively handling the hybrid uncertainties involved in the configuration environments. In addition, a bi-objective optimization model for SPS solution configuration considering smart capability efficiency and value symbiosis efficiency is proposed, and it is solved by an adaptive non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (ANSGA-II) to acquire a Pareto set of optimized configuration solutions. Finally, an application of this systematic approach to smart vehicle service demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

A TRIZ-inspired knowledge-driven approach for user-centric smart product-service system: A case study on intelligent test tube rack design

With the advancement of information and communication technologies, smart product-service system (PSS) has attracted increasing research attention to integrate diverse providers/stakeholders and deliver value-added services. Many studies have thusly been conducted to design and develop the smart PSS, while i) how to identify multi-source requirements through reviewing the entire service interaction cycle, ii) how to define and deduce the innovative smart connected products (SCPs) features under contradictory interests, and iii) how to specify the functional and data service configuration solutions are still unclear. To tackle these problems, a knowledge-driven approach was introduced to better organize the multi-source design knowledge and deduce service recommendations for personalized user demands. Specifically, a user journey map-based method was proposed for knowledge elicitation of the specific user demands. To organize the user knowledge for better understanding, hierarchical personalized user requirements (PURs) analytics were proposed to quantitively transfer PURs into proper design engineering parameters. To inspire the problem-solving logic for design solution generation, TRIZ inventive principles were retrieved and referred to. With the generated design concept, the service logic diagrams were structured to define the personalized service content of SCPs. Having the service logic and SCPs, the overall service network of the user-centric smart PSS can be outlined. The proposed approach was demonstrated and validated in the digital health area via a case study on smart test tube rack (STTR) design, and it was validated from an economic feasibility perspective. It showed that the STTR was promising to reduce manual work, improve the nurses' performance, and enhance patients’ medical experience. Furthermore, it was suggested that the proposed approach can effectively guide the innovative SCPs creation in a straightforward and instructive manner, and is promising to process the service solution deduction and improve the efficiency of service creation in real practice.     

Smart product-service systems in interoperable logistics: Design and implementation prospects

To deal with the increasing complexity of customer demands, supply chain (SC) and logistics organisation and management have been constantly moving towards collaboration, intelligence, and service-orientation. The importance of service-oriented design for SC and logistics systems has been stressed, especially with regards to interoperability and sustainability. In this context, the recent intelligent interoperable logistics paradigm has been increasingly studied and the Smart Product-Service System (PSS) concept seems interesting for the paradigm. Smart PSS are characterised by their ability to collect and process information autonomously and subsequently make decisions and self-act/evolve. Interested in the potential for tackling complex logistics systems, this paper investigates how smart PSS could be considered and designed for service-oriented, intelligent interoperable logistics. A recent breakthrough logistics paradigm called the Physical Internet (PI) is taken as a practical example in this research. We present and discuss key design issues and innovative business models associated with smart PSS in PI. The results clearly indicate the promising potential of smart PSS in PI and the need for further research. Consequently, new research avenues leading to a new era of intelligent interoperable logistics are outlined. This paper intends to contribute to two main areas of research: the design and implementation of smart PSS in PI, and functional and conceptual research on PI and intelligent interoperable logistics.     

Conceptual design of a user-centric smart product-service system using self-organizing map

As an emerging IT-driven business paradigm, smart product-service system (Smart PSS), which offers not only the smart, connected product (SCP) but also its generated service as a solution bundle, has become a vital research topic. Many research efforts have been devoted to constructing the conceptual design framework by considering SCPs and services simultaneously. However, the following critical issues in Smart PSS conceptual design have not been well addressed: how to improve the solution of Smart PSS in the conceptual design stage to meet user emotional requirements. Aiming to fill the gap, this work proposes a conceptual design method for Smart PSS from the perspective of analyzing user-generated emotions/feelings. Specifically, the relevant traditional products are identified, and their public review data is used to analyze user emotions/feelings in user-product interaction. Interactive emotion board as a new design tool is presented to organize the user-generated emotions/feelings, associated design elements, and the potential design points of the initial solution. And the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is utilized to evaluate the improved solution. To ensure the efficiency of the analysis process, the self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm is utilized in the process of clustering product samples and Kansei words. A case study of smart electric bicycle service system (SEBSS) design is used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. Based on the case study, the proposed approach appears effective in helping with Smart PSS conceptual design.     

A structural service innovation approach for designing smart product service systems: Case study of smart beauty service

Smart Product-service systems (PSS) are the emerging type of PSS that offer market value and dynamic intelligence combining products and services as solutions to consumers based on digital technology. To design a smart PSS with an effective way, a structural design approach is required. Nevertheless, only a few existing researchers discussed this topic. Aiming to bridge this gap, an integrated way is proposed for smart PSS design. This study refines a generic approach for structural service innovation approach which integrates the advantage of PSS engineering and service engineering for designing smart product service systems. The structural design approach is based on the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) incorporating with service blueprint named PRR method. Three design phases are demonstrated as verification of the PRR method by an elaborated case study of the smart beauty service. Based on PRR, three key design phases are integrated, i.e., (1) problem definition, (2) resolution generation, and (3) resolution design. Empirical results and implications are collected and discussed to obtain valuable insights for value creation.     

Industrial Internet Platform (IIP) enabled Smart Product Lifecycle-Service System (SPLSS) for manufacturing model transformation: From an industrial practice survey

Nowadays, the focus of enterprises is gradually expanding from product manufacturing system to Product service system (PSS). In the existing research, scholars mainly focus on the in-depth study of a certain method or technology, and the research on traditional PSS is relatively mature. In addition, it is a tendency that transform towards SPLSS with the characteristics of industrial internet platform (IIP) and sustainable operation theory. Based on this, this paper explores the research path from traditional product service system (PSS) to smart product service system (SPSS), and then to smart product lifecycle service system (SPLSS), which can endow the products with intelligent perception, intelligent analysis and intelligent decision-making capabilities based on Industrial Internet Platform (IIP). A reference model of IIP enabled SPLSS for industrial services based on system engineering method and theory from a very detailed practical investigation is proposed. Moreover, on the basis of this model, its three dimensional subsystems are expanded, including: supporting environment subsystem, evolution path subsystem, and added value subsystem. The study can provide a reference for the enterprise's manufacturing strategy and manufacturing path. It will promote the transformation and upgrading of enterprise manufacturing model to improve service efficiency and reduce operating costs, and then realize the value-added of products and services.     

A novel data-driven graph-based requirement elicitation framework in the smart product-service system context

Nowadays, industrial companies are facing ever-increasing challenges to generate new value-in-use and maintain their high competitiveness in the market. With the rapid development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), IT is embedded in the products themselves, i.e. smart, connected products (SCPs) to generate values. Hence, an emerging value proposition paradigm, smart product-service system (Smart PSS) was introduced, by leveraging both SCPs and its generated services as a solution bundle to meet individual customer needs. Unlike other types of PSS, in Smart PSS, massive user-generated data and product-sensed data are collected during the usage phase, where potential requirements can be elicited readily in a value co-creation manner with context-awareness. Nevertheless, only few scholars discuss any systematic manner to support requirement elicitation in such context. To fill the gaps, this research proposes a novel data-driven graph-based requirement elicitation framework in the Smart PSS, so as to assist engineering/designers make better design improvement or new design concept generation in a closed-loop manner. It underlines the informatics-based approach by integrating heterogeneous data sources into a holistic consideration. Moreover, by leveraging graph-based approach, context-product-service information can be linked by the edges and nodes in-between them to derive reliable requirements. To validate its feasibility and advantages, an illustrative example of smart bicycle design improvement is further adopted. As an explorative study, it is hoped that this work provides useful insights for the requirement elicitation process in today’s smart connected environment.     

Analysis and assessment of a knowledge based smart city architecture providing service APIs

The main technical issues regarding smart city solutions are related to data gathering, aggregation, reasoning, data analytics, access, and service delivering via Smart City APIs (Application Program Interfaces). Different kinds of Smart City APIs enable smart city services and applications, while their effectiveness depends on the architectural solutions to pass from data to services for city users and operators, exploiting data analytics, and presenting services via APIs.Therefore, there is a strong activity on defining smart city architectures to cope with this complexity, putting in place a significant range of different kinds of services and processes. In this paper, the work performed in the context of Sii-Mobility smart city project on defining a smart city architecture addressing a wide range of processes and data is presented. To this end, comparisons of the state of the art solutions of smart city architectures for data aggregation and for Smart City API are presented by putting in evidence the usage semantic ontologies and knowledge base in the data aggregation in the production of smart services. The solution proposed aggregate and re-conciliate data (open and private, static and real time) by using reasoning/smart algorithms for enabling sophisticated service delivering via Smart City API. The work presented has been developed in the context of the Sii-Mobility national smart city project on mobility and transport integrated with smart city services with the aim of reaching a more sustainable mobility and transport systems. Sii-Mobility is grounded on Km4City ontology and tools for smart city data aggregation, analytics support and service production exploiting smart city API. To this end, Sii-Mobility/Km4City APIs have been compared to the state of the art solutions. Moreover, the proposed architecture has been assessed in terms of performance, computational and network costs in terms of measures that can be easily performed on private cloud on premise. The computational costs and workloads of the data ingestion and data analytics processes have been assessed to identify suitable measures to estimate needed resources. Finally, the API consumption related data in the recent period are presented.     

A design method for an intelligent manufacturing and service system for rehabilitation assistive devices and special groups

The maturity of Industrial 4.0 technologies (smart wearable sensors, Internet of things [IoT], cloud computing, etc.) has facilitated the iteration and digitization of rehabilitation assistive devices (RADs) and the innovative development of intelligent manufacturing systems of RADs, expanding the value-added component of smart healthcare services. The intelligent manufacturing service mode, based on the concept of the product life cycle, completes the multi-source data production process analysis and the optimization of manufacturing, operation, and maintenance through intelligent industrial Internet of things and other means and improves the product life cycle management and operation mechanism. The smart product-service system (PSS) realizes the value-added of products by providing users with personalized products and value-added services, service efficiency, and sustainable development and gradually forms an Internet-product-service ecosystem. However, research on the PSS of RADs for special populations is relatively limited. Thus, this paper provides an overview of an IoT-based production model for RADs and a smart PSS-based development method of multimodal healthcare value-added services for special people. Taking the hand rehabilitation training devices for autistic children as a case, this paper verifies the effectiveness and availability of the proposed method. Compared with the traditional framework, the method used in this paper primarily helps evaluate rehabilitation efficacy, personalizes schemes for patients, provides auxiliary intelligent manufacturing service data and digital rehabilitation data for RAD manufacturers, and optimizes the product iteration development procedures by combining user-centered product interaction, multimodal evaluation, and value-added design. This study incorporates the iterative design of RADs into the process of smart PSS to provide some guidance to the RADs design manufacturers.     

电力体制改革新时代下如何提升客户满意度

过去电网企业是垄断经营,随着电力体制改革和国有企业改革的纵深推进,客户有了更多选择。优质服务关乎电网企业新时代改革发展大局,只有优质服务才能使电网企业在改革发展中进入良性循环。然而,从第三方客户满意度调查报告中反映的情况可以看出,部分单位还存在垄断思维,“以客户为中心”的服务意识在实际工作中还未得到很好的落实,具体表现在停电次数多、电压不稳定、业扩流程长、抄表催费欠规范等客户用电体验较敏感的供电服务上。本文从客户体验管理角度,关注客户的用电体验和感受,把满足人民美好生活的电力需要作为电网企业工作的出发点和落脚点,围绕提升客户服务质量的关键点、电网企业存在的客户服务短板、提升客户满意度的有效措施等方面进行了有益地探讨。     

面向智慧医疗云的SDN动态负载均衡方法

文中 引入软件定义网络(Software Defined Network,SDN)对智慧医疗云进行网络管理,并且针对传统SDN控制器存在单点失效和负载均衡的问题,设计了智慧医疗分布式SDN控制器系统。SDN控制系统分为SDN控制器集群、数据转发平面和智慧医疗云服务系统3层。在此基础上,提出一种实时负载动态自调节的快速负载均衡算法DAF(Dynamic Adaptive and Fast Load Balancing)。在该算法中,负载信息感知组件周期性地采集自己的负载信息,自动地进行控制器间的负载信息交互;控制器的负载值超过阈值时,会触发交换机迁移动作,以动态配置交换机与控制器之间的映射关系。实验结果表明,面向智慧医疗云的分布式SDN控制系统的性能良好,且DAF算法能够快速地实现SDN控制器间的负载均衡,提升了智慧医疗云的网络吞吐量。     

大数据背景下智慧教育云平台构建研究

基于神经网络教育平台存在资源获取速度慢的缺点,针对该问题,提出了大数据背景下智慧教育云平台构建研究。在大数据支持下,设计智慧教育云平台总体架构,通过物理层、虚拟资源层配置相关硬件设备,经过逻辑层和展现层为用户提供有效服务,利用现有智慧信息,为用户提供个性化服务。优化处理Web端框架代码,降低代码复杂性,注重系统权限管控,科学设计服务功能,完成智慧教育云平台构建。由实验结果可知,该平台资源获取速度最高可达到99.5 MB/s,有效提高了学生学习效率。     

Customer requirement-driven design method and computer-aided design system for supporting service innovation conceptualization handling

How to create value to meet customers’ requirements by effectively using advanced digital technology (DT) for digital transformation is an implementation challenge for new and future scenarios of current contexts. Valid digital transformation issues need to be considered to deliver novel values with sustainability concerns. Attempting to effectively achieve a successful service system design in an industrial context, a holistic customer requirement-driven service design method with abductive logic was proposed to drive self-service productivity enhancement. Laddering theory, ontology-based design knowledge hierarchy (DKH), theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) and quality function deployment (QFD) technique are adopted in terms of effective design knowledge handling in innovation conceptualization with a traceable path and abductive logic linking from customer concerns, business context and technology digitization. Then, a comprehensive case study of an empirical smart meal-ordering service system for the digital transformation of canteen processes was illustrated to verify this approach.     

A digital smart product service system and a case study of the mining industry: MSPSS

Mining equipment products and services no longer meet the needs of future development in the mining industry due to high safety and operational risk. The deep integration of the product-service system (PSS) and digitization is required in the mining industry to promote industry transformation and safe and efficient production without changing the traditional operation mode. This paper proposes a smart product-service system for the mining industry (MSPSS) consisting of a smart product subsystem, stakeholders, smart service subsystem, and smart decision-making subsystem. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and virtual reality (VR) are used for decision-making, product selection, operation, and maintenance. The smart product subsystem outputs reliable digital products using three stages: digital design, virtual simulation and planning, and virtual debugging. The smart service subsystem is driven by data and digital technology and provides fault diagnosis and online maintenance services for complex mining products. A case study indicates that all stakeholders can participate seamlessly in the design process. The smart product subsystem uses iterative optimization (more than 100 iterations) to obtain the design results interactively. The smart service subsystem provides digitalized services throughout the entire process. Thus, a stable, reliable, and comprehensive product and service solution is provided for complex mining conditions. The output is used to guide the design, debugging, and operation of physical equipment. The MSPSS has higher design quality and efficiency, a shorter design time, and lower design cost (key performance indicator (KPI)) than the traditional design method.