SErvice Engineering Methodology in Practice: A case study from power and automation technologies

The global crisis and the fierce competition of emerging countries make companies struggling to stay ahead of competition. The number of companies that are enlarging their offer portfolio looking forward to new and increased sources of revenues is always increasing but the number of companies failing in successfully implementing servitization strategy is even more. One possible reason behind this is the lack of tools to support companies while dealing with services that by definition are characterized by high level of intangibility and perishability. The Service Engineering (SE) discipline that is currently working for an integrated development of tools and methodologies specifically related to services is still under development and the existing methodologies are more oriented to the manufacturing context. In the SE context Pezzotta et al., in 2014 suggested the SErvice Engineering Methodology (SEEM) for the engineering and the re-engineering of new service or Product-Service System (PSS) helping the companies in balancing their internal performance with the service value perceived by the customer. This paper aims at understanding the industrial applicability of such methodology. It presents a real case study carried out in collaboration with ABB Spa, a leading provider in power and automation technology. In the paper, all the steps performed during the application of the SEEM are described, together with the difficulties encountered. Some insights obtained with the application are also described.