Smart Service Canvas – A tool for analyzing and designing smart product-service systems

Abstract

Service that is delivered through so-called smart products is increasingly popular under the term smart service. While customers benefit from smart service through the intelligent maintenance of equipment that avoids unwanted and expensive downtimes, it enables manufacturing firms to collect and analyze extensive data on the actual use of machinery and equipment, helping them to offer solutions tailored to customer needs. Methods for the design of the corresponding smart product-service systems (PSS), however, have not yet been adopted widely in practice; emphasizing to the need for lightweight tools that are ready-to-use. This article introduces the Smart Service Canvas as such an instrument to analyze and design smart PSS concepts. We demonstrated the canvas in workshop settings with various participants. We found that the canvas stimulates multi-perspective discussions during service design and that it is helpful in providing a quick overview of a smart PSS.