Distributed manufacturing applied to product-service systems

Product-Service Systems (PSS) business model combines products and services into an offering that addresses specific customer needs, enables ownership-free consumption and shows the potential to enable circular economy.

However, it is well known that the implementation of PSS business models is sometimes hindered by a number of organisational, cultural, and regulatory barriers. The hypothesis of this PhD research, carried out as a part of the EU-funded (ERASMUS+) research project LeNSin, was that the application of localised small-scale and personalised production, so called Distributed Manufacturing (DM), can help companies and designers to overcome some of the barriers and improve the development of PSS offerings.

The overall aim of this research project was to investigate the potential applications of DM to improve PSS by coupling existing PSS implementation barriers with favourable DM opportunities into a set of near-future scenarios. Scenarios were then integrated into the idea generation tool which was tested with students, PSS and/or DM experts, manufacturing companies and design practitioners through three rounds of workshops in order to evaluate its completeness, effectiveness and usability and define recommendations for improvements. The improved final version of the "PSS+DM Design Tool" presents the potential to support idea generation to improve sustainable PSS development through the application of DM.

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Design for Sustainability - We focus on developing the theory and practice required to design solutions that foster environmental, socio-ethical and economic sustainability in areas ranging from materials and manufacturing to products, services, business models, bottom-up initiatives and socio-technical systems.

Project last modified 21/11/2023