Servicization of Product Lifecycle Management: Towards Service Lifecycle Management

Nowadays, many manufacturing industries are operating a process of servicization, id est the build-up of services to a product-centered offer. The implementation of service engineering into product-related activities requires a company to adapt to the new stakes on several levels, including strategic approaches and information systems. Therefore, Service Lifecycle Management (SLM), similarly to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) might be defined as a way to take into consideration these new stakes, enabling management of services in a holistic approach dealing with service data and their structure. Products and services can benefit from information exchanges from one to another. In the aeronautic industry, several companies have shown the relevancy of information spreading between product and service activities in a bidirectional manner. A serviced product is thus designed considering the use stage and its service operations, which permits the collection of valuable information to improve design processes. Nevertheless, there are few research works on the convergence of the solutions brought out by SLM and PLM. This paper analyses how those two strategic approaches might coincide with the Information System's point of view in order to benefit from an effective interaction. A general analysis is presented at first. Then the paper focuses on the application of the paradigm of serviced products to the automotive industry.