Seminar

Abstract

The prevailing implementation of the third-wave of IT innovation (e.g. Internet-of-Things, Smart, Connected Products) and the fourth Industrial Revolution (e.g. Cyber-Physical Systems) have enabled the prevailing digital transformation (i.e. digitalization), where physical products can be readily digitized into the virtual space and remain seamlessly interconnected. Meanwhile, industries are ever increasingly adopting service-oriented business models (i.e. servitization), so as to offer not only physical products but also services as a solution bundle to meet individual customer needs. Such convergence of both digitalization and servitization (i.e. digital servitization) has triggered an emerging IT-driven value proposition paradigm, smart product-service systems (Smart PSS). In such context, Smart PSS design innovation is conducted in a 4V data-driven manner, and differs from existing ones mainly in three aspects: 1) closed-loop design iteration, 2) value co-creation process, and 3) design with context-awareness. This report embraces the state-of-the-art academic works, together with the speaker’s own understanding and research output, to elaborate the IT-driven design innovation of Smart PSS from 4 aspects accordingly: 1) Recap of product design methodologies. It is pointed out that in today’s smart, connected environment, data-driven design with IT support acts as the major tendency. 2) Self-adaptable design theory for closed-loop design iteration. Smart connected open architecture product is defined as a proper design mechanism to enable self-adaptable design with lifecycle considerations. 3) A hybrid crowdsensing mechanism for value co-creation. It adopts the prevailing mobile crowdsensing paradigm by leveraging large-scale mobile devices and empowers users to contribute their generated/sensed data. Meanwhile, it is combined with physical sensors with static sensing nodes in the industrial environment for value co-creation purposes. 4) Data-driven design with context-awareness. By exploiting knowledge graph and graph embedding techniques, “product-service-condition” information can be readily established to trigger design innovation in a context-based or event-based manner. Based on the abovementioned theoretical contributions, several application scenarios of Smart PSS solution design are further provided at last. It is hoped that this seminar can provide some basic knowledge and useful insights to attract audiences in their exploration and implementation in the field of Smart PSS.

Bio

PAI ZHENG is currently a Research Fellow in the Delta-NTU Corporate Laboratory for Cyber-Physical Systems, in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He received his dual B.S. degrees in engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2010, the M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Beihang University, Beijing, China, in 2013, and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, in 2017. His research interest includes smart product-service systems, data-driven product design, and human-centric value co-creation. He is a member of ASME(2017- ), IEEE(2017- ), CMES(2018- ), and serves as the Guest Editor for the journal of Advanced Engineering Informatics, and referee for several high impact international journals in the manufacturing/industrial engineering field.