Decision Uncertainties in the Planning of Product-Service System Portfolios

During the early phase of the product development process of future Product-Service System (PSS) portfolios, the planning phase, solutions ideas are generated and within a decision process the best ones are selected. In this phase, the designer faces the challenge of making decisions under great uncertainty, because many of these decisions have a great impact on the rest of the product development but still with small knowledge of the product. In this paper we present a method for depicting and evaluating the possible uncertainties as a decision support for companies. By analyzing the interconnections between impact factors, decision criteria and PSS-elements and their stability, the uncertainty of each decision criterion related to a PSS-element can be calculated. This way, the designer can get a general idea of the existing uncertainties and their relevance. As a basis for the method, the important criteria regarding uncertainties in the early phase of the product planning were analyzed by means of a literature research. This was followed by a preliminary definition of the approach for evaluating decision uncertainties occurring throughout the planning phase of Product-Service Systems. Finally, the approach was evaluated by the application of the method in two case studies.