Abstract

In the past decade, Product-Service Systems (PSS) have been adopted by companies as a business model that can fulfill customers’ needs better, enhance market competitiveness and achieve sustainability. PSS integrates tangible product and intangible service in different ratio, which makes its design process complicated. However, in the design discipline, there has not been enough discussion for the methodological implications of PSS design, even though design components play a critical role in the development of PSS. In this thesis, a systematic approach — Environment Based Design (EBD) methodology is applied to formalize the PSS design process, focuses on analyzing the environment components and their relationships. The comparison between EBD and the conventional PSS design methodologies are conducted. A PSS life cycle model generated according to the EBD analysis is proposed in order to help designers respond quickly to changes from the environment along the whole life cycle. The benefits resulted from EBD based PSS design process are discovered. A case study of elevator PSS design reveals the effectiveness, efficiency and the benefits of EBD methodology.