The need for new product development capabilities from digitalization, sustainability, and servitization trends
2020 (English)In: Sustainability, E-ISSN 2071-1050, Vol. 12, no 23, p. 1-26, article id 10222Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Apparent from the latest pandemic, the dynamics and rate of change in society accelerate on a global scale. Ongoing mega-trends in society, such as digitalization, sustainability, and servitization, fundamentally changes the conditions for manufacturers when developing and providing new products. This study clarifies the combined impact and consequences on product development capabilities in manufacturing firms of the three mega-trends: (i) digitalization, (ii) sustainability, and (iii) servitization. The research is based on a pre-study, complemented with a semi-structured interview study at small, medium-sized, and large Swedish-based manufacturing companies, and a systematic literature review. The research makes evident that the main challenge is to empower engineers and development teams to model, present, evaluate, and develop expected and smart digitalized solutions in a time-limited environment and prioritize the most resource efficient and sustainable solution. Therefore, four complementary support resources are suggested: (i) a knowledge management platform, (ii) a data management platform, (iii) a set of criteria and metrics measuring progression, and (iv) support methods and tools to define, model, and evaluate solutions. When integrated into a digital platform, developers can simultaneously access and process the necessary information needed for sustainable, digitalized, and servitized solutions. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
MDPI AG , 2020. Vol. 12, no 23, p. 1-26, article id 10222
Keywords [en]
Design capabilities, Digitalization, Manufacturing companies, Product-service systems, Servitization, Sustainability, Sustainable product development, Trends, data management, digitization, epidemic, knowledge, manufacturing, product development, questionnaire survey, sustainable development, trend analysis, Sweden
National Category
Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-20879DOI: 10.3390/su122310222ISI: 000597457900001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85097409493OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-20879DiVA, id: diva2:1514039
Funder
Knowledge Foundation
Note
open access
2021-01-042021-01-042022-02-10Bibliographically approved