technical service

The acquisition of technical data throughout the life of a product is of enormous importance in many industrial areas. For example, the maintenance processes can be designed to be more efficient and derived findings from the operational phase can be used for the development of new generations of products. Mobile systems that support the management of complex technical systems allow greater attention to the operational phases of the lifetime utilizing familiar concepts, such as product lifecycle management (PLM). The requirements and challenges of mobile systems are shown and compared with current trends and concepts.

In today’s competitive environment, product enhancing technical services (service products) are increasingly perceived as success factors in the production industry. Consequentially, there is a need for practically oriented models for systematic service product design. This paper defines service products and describes their functions and corresponding design dimensions. Furthermore, a recently developed phase model for systematic service product design is introduced, based on which an approach for the design of technical product service systems is presented. The approach aims at exploiting the largely unused potentials of the distribution and service network partners with which many production companies work together.