A Product Service-System (PSS) is an integrated combination of products and services. This western concept embraces a service led competitive strategy, environmental sustainability, and the basis to differentiate from competitors who simply offer lower priced products. This paper aims to report the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature is classified and the major outcomes of each study are addressed and analysed.On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features, gives examples of applications along with potential benefits and barriers to adoption, summarises available tools and methodologies, and identifies future research challenges. AbstractA Product Service-System (PSS) is an integrated combination of products and services. This western concept embraces a service led competitive strategy, environmental sustainability, and the basis to differentiate from competitors who simply offer lower priced products. This paper aims to report the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature is classified and the major outcomes of each study are addressed and analysed.On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features, gives examples of applications along with potential benefits and barriers to adoption, summarises available tools and methodologies, and identifies future research challenges.

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Purpose: This paper presents a framework that will help manufacturing firms to configure their internal production and support operations to enable effective and efficient delivery of products and their closely associated services.Design/methodology/approach: First we establish the key definitions and literature sources directly associated with servitization of manufacturing. We then develop a theoretical framework that categorises the key characteristics of a manufacturer's operations strategy, this is populated using both evidence from the extant literature and empirical data.Findings: The framework captures a set of operations principles, structures and processes which can guide a manufacturer in the delivery of product-centric servitized offering. These are illustrated and contrasted against operations that deliver purely product (production operations) and those which deliver purely services (services operations).Limitations/implications: The work is based on a review of the literature supported by data collected from an exploratory case study. Whilst it provides an essential platform, further research will be needed to validate our framework.Originality: The principal contribution of this paper is a framework which captures the key characteristics of operations for product-centric servitized manufacture.

The return that organizations derive from investments in information systems

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The return that organisations derive from investments in information systems and technology continues to disappoint. While there is a very significant body of literature on the factors that should facilitate a successful outcome from systems development, there is growing concern that these prescriptions are not having their desired effect. In this paper, we argue that the success of a systems development project should be measured in terms of its ability to deliver meaningful benefits, rather than the timely delivery of a technical artefact, and therefore organisations should adopt an explicit and proactive benefits realisation approach when investing in IT. Consequently, we sought to explore those actionable factors that might facilitate the effective realisation of benefits from systems development initiatives. Three organisations were identified that claimed to adopt a proactive approach to benefits realisation, and detailed studies of their systems development practices were conducted. Our analysis found that whilst one organisation had been successful in its adoption of a benefits realisation perspective, the other two had not, and this allowed us to identify those factors that helped to explain this difference in outcomes. In short, this paper makes an important contribution by identifying how a subset of traditional systems success factors might be enhanced, to give them a more explicit benefits realisation orientation. Moreover, it presents a coherent set of principles that can be used for deriving other factors and practices.

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