Digital Platforms as Enablers of Smart Product-Service Systems

The impact of digital technologies in manufacturing organizations has been felt for decades. Servitization processes themselves have developed from the traditional Product-Service Systems (PSS) toward new business models infused with digital technologies, paving the way to smart PSS. There is, however, a lack of understanding of how digital platforms (DP) can be leveraged for the offering of smart service offerings. In this paper, we highlight how the emergence of DP traces the evolution of PSS and highlight how a platform-based modular architecture can serve as the reference infrastructure for organizations to deliver smart and highly customized products and services. The architecture of the Transformer 4.0 platform is used to demonstrate how DP can serve as orchestrators for an ecosystem of digital twin-driven smart PSS.