Development of a Systematization of Service-Oriented Business Models for the Mechanical Engineering Industry

Manufacturing companies, such as plant manufacturers and factory equipment suppliers, have been able to expand their traditional business model with services in recent decades, particularly around their core product. Thus, the transactional business model evolved into today's project business, where for example engineering services and after-sales services were additionally provided. Through the advancing integration of producers, customers and machines into cyber-physical systems, known as Industrie 4.0, it is now also possible to offer the core product as a service. This development is described with the help of various concepts such as service transformation, product-service system and servitization. Many of these concepts are interdependent and ambiguous. A clear scientific treatment of the concepts and especially a comparison of the concepts is therefore currently not possible. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop a systematization in the form of a morphology that describes the various concepts that constitute servitization of the core service product in the engineering industry. In doing so, the systematization is based on the four dimensions: customer, value proposition, revenue mechanics and value chain.