Supporting product-servicing networks

Service-based enhancement of products represents a growing trend, particularly in the context of complex products. A service-enhanced product can be seen as a market proposition that extends the traditional functionality of a product by incorporating additional business services, which not only allows better response to customer needs, but also provides greater forms of product differentiation and thus inducing new business opportunities. Provision of such services typically requires the collaboration of multiple stakeholders and therefore adequate organizational structures and support environments are needed. In this context, a cloud computing based collaborative environment is proposed, which aims at supporting effective development and life-cycle of service-enhanced products involving the participation of multiple stakeholders in different forms of collaborative networks, including long-term strategic networks and goal-oriented, short- and long-term, networks comprising a wide variety of stakeholders and roles. Achieved results are based on the requirements and validated in the domain of solar energy parks.