An Analysis of Flexible Manufacturing on the Support of the Development of Smart Product-Service Systems

Currently, changes in the customer’s mindset and increased flexibility in manufacturing shifted competition between companies to focus on the product’s value rather than its cost. In this context, Product-Service Systems (PSSs) are an alternative to traditional value propositions (i.e. pure products, pure services) by combining services with products and providing an experience to customers. In recent decades, PSSs were expanded from solely business aspects to engineering aspects and technical considerations in their scope, such as the paradigms of Technical PSS, Industrial PSS, Digitalized PSS and Cyber-Physical PSS. More recently, due to the application of Industry 4.0 concepts, there is a significant increase of “smart technologies”, i.e. sensors; connectivity; mobile application, in PSSs, naming it a new paradigm on the field, known as Smart PSSs. In this context, this research aims to explore and discuss current issues related to the integration of flexible manufacturing processes and Smart PSSs through a literature review and analysis, regarding information sharing, traceability and system reconfiguration based on customer’s requirements. Found literature points to gaps in the theme related to semantic issues and design issues regarding the dynamic reconfiguration of the manufacturing process and the Smart PSS. The modern approaches to the theme, as found in literature, are still not able to cope with the semantic barriers and high volume of heterogeneous information in a holistic manner. Conclusions point that further investigation of the cited issues is required in a systematic manner, as well as the development of models that can cope with the presented issues.