PSS Pattern Concept for Knowledge Representation in Design Process of Industrial Product-service Systems

To save time and cost in development process of new customized product-service systems, engineers need methodological guidelines and generic knowledge that help constructing specific solutions for new customers’ requirements and business opportunities. Despite the specific character of every PSS due to several customization issues, many characteristics are shared between PSS from the same product and/or service family. This paper proposes a knowledge-based methodology to support the PSS design process, extending the concepts of pattern and instance as main knowledge fragments. The main idea is to encapsulate in the pattern a conceptual definition of a collection of potential verified solutions, able to achieve a product-service with certain performance value with regard to a set of working conditions. These solutions are then filtered and refined by means of the PSS instance when answering one specific PSS demand.