Service Engineering

The term Service Engineering refers to the systematic development of individual services. Today, however, industrial companies are increasingly selling solutions and making promises regarding availability or results. This means that the systematic approach of engineering must remain, but the scope of consideration has expanded.

In practice, this means that we no longer simply design services, but rather the service business as a whole – and we do so consistently from the customer’s perspective. We examine who the actual customers of a value proposition are, what problem needs to be solved, and what business model results from this. Building on this, we design concrete offering structures and service promises as holistic solutions, which also include, for example, service-level agreements.

To ensure that the service can fulfill its role as a profit center, we examine how revenue and pricing models should be structured – from individual services to outcome-based contracts – and clarify how such offerings can be successfully marketed. The focus is always on the customer and their needs throughout the entire lifecycle, as these define the requirements for the solution (product-service system).

Examples of Research Questions

• What will the service business model of the future (without transactional sales) look like?
• How should an economically viable product-service system for the upgrade circular economy be designed?
• How is the provider-customer relationship evolving in new business models?
• What influence does the service have on product development (and vice versa), and how should this collaboration be structured?