Validation of Product-Service Systems - A Prototyping Approach

Product-Service Systems (PSS) combine tangible products and intangible services in an integrated system which is offered to the customer as an individual solution. Due to interdependencies between these different system elements the complexity of PSS is very high, thus preventing a simple transfer of validation methods of classical product development or service engineering. This leads to a lack of validation methods for the testing of PSS. Within the paper the processes, methods and tools of prototyping are analyzed and possibilities are determined how existing methods can be used for PSS-Prototyping, at which point they can be applied and which aspects of PSS can be validated. Afterwards, a new prototyping approach for PSS is presented in a use case. (C) 2014 Elseiver B.V.