Defining Lean Product Service Systems features and research trends through a systematic literature review

Through the digitalisation of manufacturing, product-service systems (PSS) and smart connected products are, from the companies’ side, driving a market transition from a sale of products towards a sale of use of solutions, and, from the customers’ side, reshaping the concept of value. The systematic integration of intangibles services with physical products requires companies’ alignment also in terms of practices and tools adopted to develop and design these complex solutions adequately. The extant literature proposes several approaches to develop PSSs: it has been stated that the majority of them embedded in their structure some characteristics that are typical of concurrent engineering and lean product development theories. In the meanwhile, a research stream, named lean PSS, has progressively arisen up in the last few years. However, how so far the extant literature has already contributed to the forthcoming lean PSS domain is not clear. In order to better clarify and address this issue, this article, based on a systematic literature review approach, defines lean PSS, also exploring its main features and application areas and defining the related possible research opportunities.