Applying Distributed Manufacturing to Product-Service System Design: A Set of Near-Future Scenarios and a Design Tool

Abstract

Product-Service Systems (PSS), if properly designed and implemented, represent a promising approach to sustainability. However, there is a number of organisational, cultural and regulatory barriers that hinder the widespread PSS implementation. In this paper, the authors investigated Distributed Manufacturing (DM) as a promising production model which can be applied to PSS to address some of its implementation barriers and improve its sustainability. To that end, existing PSS implementation barriers were collected and coupled with systematically analysed favourable DM features to describe a set of PSS+DM near-future scenarios, addressing the complete PSS lifecycle. Scenarios were then integrated into the PSS+DM Design Tool aiming to support idea generation for PSS implementation. The tool was tested with students, PSS and/or DM experts, manufacturing companies and design practitioners through two rounds of workshops in order to evaluate its completeness, effectiveness and usability and define recommendations for improvements. Based on the results, the improved final version of the PSS+DM Design Tool was developed, presenting the potential to support idea generation to improve sustainable PSS implementation through integrating DM features in each PSS lifecycle stage.