Cronología de presentación de una base de datos de Dispositivo Remoto al CENACE

A customised nature is an essential characteristic of solutions, because suiting the customer’s operations is crucial to a solution’s capacity to facilitate its value-in-use. At the same time, pressure to improve the efficiency of developing solutions is ever-increasing, because by reducing the costs of each individual solution, economies of scale and scope can exert effects that boost profitability. Against that background, this thesis has addressed combining standardisation with customisation by focusing on the use of platforms for product–service solutions, particularly by identifying and describing factors influencing the use of a platform approach.

6.1.1 Influential factors

A first conclusion is that a platform for product–service solutions differs from both product and service platforms in terms of its output, time and space dependencies, primary drivers of costs, and the assets used for the platforms. While a solution architecture can be described at various levels of decomposition, the architecture still differs from those for products and those for services, which affects the use of a platform approach for product–service solutions.

Second, a platform approach for product–service solutions is suitable if the objective is to increase the volume of solutions provided by creating economies of scale and of scope. Under certain circumstances, a platform approach for product–service solutions benefits internal and external communication by serving as a reference point, in addition to facilitating cost-efficiency and effectiveness in responding to customers’ needs. It additionally serves as a means of responding more quickly to customers’ orders, because the development lead time could be reduced, thereby shortening the time to market for individual solutions. Beyond that, a platform approach can enable collaboration with external parties in order to provide more overall solutions by affording access

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to additional knowledge about both usage and technology. Such collaboration and reductions in lead time derive from opportunities of dividing the process in which the assets used for the platform are established, from the efforts and activities required to make individual solutions suit customers’ operations, i.e. delay the point in time when the development becomes customer specific.

Third, though the thesis describes several advantages in the use of a platform approach for product– service solutions, such an approach’s applicability is constrained by several influential factors. It depends upon the business strategy, including the objectives of the solution business, the solution architecture, the organisational architecture and the nature of customers’ needs in terms of both variation among customers and over time. While some variation can be managed in a platform for product–service solutions, the need for at least moderate stability should be met, because it is required to be able to achieve economies of scale.

Therefore, referring to the solution architecture, this thesis highlights that the use of a platform approach for product–service solutions is contingent upon the type and degree of integration between the product and the services. That integration, in turn, influences the use of a platform approach by giving it specific characteristics, particularly in the design and development of solutions, by making the products and services inseparable from the customer’s point of view. Such integration also bears a major impact on the design of the solution architecture and activates the benefits of a platform approach, not a modular strategy, for those solutions, because interdependence of products and services from a design and development phase forward can be incorporated therein and leveraged on.

6.1.2 The use of a platform approach

Several challenges arise in developing product–service solutions through a platform approach, some of which are due to a misalignment between the solution architecture and the organisational architecture. The findings in this thesis especially underscore the difficulties occurring if separating product and service development in developing product–service solutions by taking a platform approach, in which the product and services should be integrated already in the design phase (i.e. in the solution platform architecture). That understanding follows the mirroring hypothesis, which identifies a relationship between the organisational and product architecture. An organisational separation of product and service development does not correspond to the solution platform architecture as suggested in this thesis, neither does it support required integration-oriented efforts

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among product and service development activities. Due to that misalignment, it appears that a separation of product and service aspects structurally lead to a tension in solutions development, which can inhibit the platform approach for product–service solutions to evolve.

Recognising those challenges, this thesis suggests three major steps of developing product–service solutions by using a platform approach: developing the platform (i.e. establishing the assets to be shared among solutions), customisation (i.e. concerned with configuration of the solution to make it useful in the customers’ operations), and personalisation (i.e. about adapting the delivery of the solution). First, knowledge about both usage and technology are identified as assets to be shared among solutions—that is, forming the platform itself. Those assets correspond to knowledge required in relation to the problem (i.e. applying knowledge about usage and users to understand the setting) and the solution (i.e. leveraging knowledge about technology to solve a problem). When considering how a platform approach influences the development of product–service solutions, ways of using those assets are influential, as a process in which both knowledge streams are used to establish the platform.

To develop a platform, acquiring and establishing the knowledge needed can take two approaches as identified in this thesis: starting with an individual solution or starting by establishing the basis for the solution family (i.e. the platform). Although those approaches can be used in combination, they constitute different points of departure, with different advantages and drawbacks. In determining the starting point for developing the platform, companies should consider the roles of knowledge about both technology and usage. Setting out to either focus on managing variation over time or volume within what is possible by using a platform approach, the point of departure makes development-oriented efforts visible to a larger or lesser extent to the individual customers, depending on the degree of closeness to them. Companies should also pay attention to their collaborations with other actors in the network, because the different approaches manage the relationships with those external actors differently.

The two subsequent steps in the development of product–service solutions using a platform approach are customisation and personalisation, both of which comprise activities targeting individual customers. This thesis distinguishes customisation from personalisation by highlighting the need to acknowledge the resources and efforts invested in those different activities that require partly different sets of knowledge. In customisation, knowledge about both technology and usage

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are utilised, while personalisation mostly relies upon knowledge about usage alone in order to be able to adapt the delivery of the solution. Although that personalisation of the solution is essential for the experience of the solution, it cannot assure the solution’s functionality in the customer’s operations. To ensure an integration between the customer’s operations and the solution to enable value-in-use, customisation efforts are needed.