Managing customer requirements for an effective service implementation in a Product-Service System (PSS)

The research addresses the management of customers' requirements when implementing services in a Product-Service System (PSS) context. Services have expanded throughout recent years, yet their proper management and implementation remains a problematic matter for manufacturers. Uncertainties and ambiguities characterize services due to their intangible nature on one hand and the customers' subjectivities on the other. Hence, when it comes to capturing the customer's requirements for the PSS' services, traditional product design tools such as the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) are limited for their accurate assessment and prioritization in order to develop an adequate service-oriented solution. To address this issue, the QFD is augmented using the fuzzy logic and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with the goal of reducing the above inaccuracies. The proposed approach is verified at a manufacturer in the medical field, where few practical PSS investigations have been carried out despite their largely remarked potential.