FROM PRODUCT DESIGNER TO PSS DESIGNER - HOW TO EDUCATE ENGINEERS TO BECOME PSS DESIGNERS

Today’s universities teach conventional product design for mechanical engineers and service engineering for business administration students. This separated thinking and teaching of design categories does not fit to the offers actually existing at the market. Taking a closer look at these offerings, there are little pure product or pure service offers but most of them are so called product service systems (PSS). Originated in the area of eco design, PSS have been researched now for more than a decade. And a rising number of offers that are perfect examples for PSS, e.g. car sharing, show the relevance of this topic for the society. Moreover the concept of PSS is regarded to be a key for achieving development goals like dematerialization as well as raising use intensity of a product and lead towards more sustainable consumption. Furthermore most of the offers that look like a pure product can be identified as PSS at a second glance because usually there is at least some service element within the offer. However, usually the product designers had no clue about the concept of PSS and how to handle the service element within an integrated development. This paper aims to present fundamental basics of PSS, to provide theoretical knowledge about the concept and design of PSS to enable product designers to broaden their view. And moreover enable them to handle so called product design tasks, which in fact are PSS design.