The increasing need for mobility in society alongside an intensifying concern for sustainability challenges today’s aviation industry. For companies, a Product-Service Systems (PSS) perspective puts emphasis on proving value to customers by offering a combination of hardware and services over an extended life cycle. While opening up the room for innovation, development from an extended life cycle perspective can seem daunting for companies currently focusing on development and sale of physical goods.
This thesis highlights aspects of innovation and working practices of methodand product development, from a PSS standpoint, where the main focus today is development of physical goods being sold as hardware to aircraft engine manufacturers. Further, the thesis addresses the need for engineering design tool support for PSS innovation, proposing a modular approach for representation of product and service elements. The goal has been to better understand how product developers can focus on the life-cycle perspective taking into account services in early product development phases.
Seen from traditional perspective the introduction of new sets of requirements comes in conflict with traditional requirements and governing practices. However, if seen from a PSS perspective managing these new sets of requirements opens up the firm’s ability to innovate in order to provide added value to customers. By integration of the product and service design process and collaboration with heterogeneous knowledge sources the company is likely to able to create value for customers in different ways than before.