What is a DPS (Digital Product-Service) system?

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A DPS (Digital Product-Service) system is the central information system that enables and supports a Connected Services offering.

The system acts as the backbone of the connected product-service system. It processes and analyzes the data received from connected products to detect events, such as failures or executed jobs, and recognize patterns, such as good or bad product usage. It generates valuable insights, such as KPIs, trends, and benchmarks, and highlights situations requiring attention, such as anomalies or potential predicted failures. Additionally, the system provides recommendations, such as running a cleaning cycle, and triggers actions and workflows, such as placing an order for consumables or spare parts.

At the same time the system establishes two-way communication with connected products, enabling and facilitating the remote delivery of commands, parameters, recipes and updates.

The system is also the central hub responsible for distributing information, recommendations, and actions to all stakeholders along the value chain of the product-service system, according to their roles, jobs, needs, and goals. It serves 2 main categories of users: end customers and the service workforce.

We can call the part of the DPS system addressing end customers a ‘“Connected” Customer Portal. Here end customers find detailed data, actionable information, recommendations and digital capabilities, enabled by the data from connected products, that helps them achieve the outcome they expect.

We can call the part of the DPS system addressing the service workforce a ‘“Connected” Digital Control Room. Here the service workforce find detailed data, insights, meaningful information and digital capabilities, enabled by the data from connected products, that supports their service activities.

A DPS system typically has the following main capabilities:

  1. Receiving, organizing and centrally processing data from connected products. The data flows in a continuous, uninterrupted stream.

  2. Establishing two-way communication with products, to allow remote delivery of commands, parameters, recipes, and software / firmware updates.

  3. Detecting events, such as failures or executed operations.

  4. Generating valuable insights, such as KPIs, trends, and benchmarks.

  5. Highlighting situations requiring attention, such as anomalies or potential predicted failures.

  6. Providing recommendations, such as running a cleaning cycle or performing an activity to solve a problem.

  7. Triggering actions and workflows, such as placing an order for consumables or spare parts, or dispatching a technician.

  8. Distributing information and providing digital capabilities to all stakeholders in the product-service system according to their roles, jobs, needs, and goals.

  9. Managing the after-sales lifecycle of products and services.

A DPS system typically is not alone. It stands above the layer of IoT technologies responsible for establishing the connection with products and beside the manufacturer's information systems such as the ERP, CRM, and especially the FSM.

DPS systems form a new software category.

The justification for this new software category lies in the fact that the application needs of those who want to deliver Connected Services are not met by any adjacent software category such as IIoT Platforms, FSM software, BI platforms, CRM or ERP software.

This is the reason why all equipment manufacturers who have undertaken this initiative to date have developed bespoke applications, often at considerable expense.

All these bespoke applications share very similar features, patterns and visualizations. We can easily file them into this category.

Are you already building a bespoke DPS system?

If you have already started the development of your “Cloud” or “Connect” solution, probably you are already building a bespoke DPS system