Over the last decade, manufacturing firms have shown increasing interest to shift from selling physical products to providing solutions for customer needs. Several concepts, such as the Integrated Product Service Offering (IPSO), have been developed to support these companies.

This thesis sheds additional light on aspects and consequences of applying the SPIPS (Solution Provider through Integrated Product Service development), an IPSO design method for a Complex Product Systems (CoPS) provider through a case study. The thesis reveals that a CoPS provider could benefit by applying the SPIPS method in terms of improving the environmental performance of CoPS, creating synergy between the SPIPS method and other managerial systems (e.g. Customer Value Management (CVM) and Research & Development (R&D) management) and service-related knowledge integration in the product development process.

The SPIPS method can contribute to the environmental performance of CoPS to a wide extent. In the design phase, the most influential phase, the IPSO design method can provide different options to address the environmental performance of CoPS. In the use phase, with the highest environmental impact, the SPIPS method can facilitate the design of different services which could outperform existing technological solutions for changing physical products in terms of contribution to the environmental performance of CoPS.

Furthermore, the SPIPS method can support CVM through developing analytical trees for customer values. Through evaluating the correlation between design parameters and finding the most important ones, designers can focus on the “hot spot” and managers can assign resources in an effective and efficient way. The customer-centric feature of the IPSO concept can also contribute to CVM in terms of improving the process of evaluating customer value, and by providing customized offerings to meet customer needs.

In addition, based on the SPIPS method a process is developed to prioritize R&D projects with regard to provider value and customer value. Provider value and customer value, which are not always the same, are used as drivers for R&D project prioritization. The value-based Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is used to overcome the difficulty of systematically relating R&D projects with customer value. The value-based QFD improves the process of service-related knowledge integration in the design phase of product development, and provides designers with the opportunity to investigate the total effect of each R&D project on customer value over the product life cycle.