انعطاف پذیری در سیستم های محصول و خدمات صنعتی و مدل های کسب و کار مصرف گرا

Today's corporate environment is characterized by growing dynamics and uncertainties. Here, flexibility gains importance as a critical success factor. This is especially true for those innovative business models, which have in common relational and long-term customer-supplier relationships. As a solution to the mentioned uncertainties connected with such a business relationship, one can think of flexibility designed Industrial Product-Service Systems. The contribution at hand focuses on contracts to control customer-supplier relationships, which remain incomplete due to their long-term horizon and the resulting uncertainties and therefore implicate incentive problems and, thus, inefficiencies. We can show that by re-allocating property rights in use-oriented business models it is possible to distribute incentives and risks more uniformly and to better balance the interests of customers and suppliers. Doing so, the leeway resulting from these incomplete contracts should nor be interpreted as a risk anymore but more as an opportunity to exploit the accordant development of flexible Industrial Product-Service Systems. Our contribution points out the importance of flexibility and describes the opportunity to detect the optimal degree of flexibility of such a system.

The change from a mere product business to selling customized problem solutions has lead to the establishment of terms such as business models, performance contracts, life-cycle costs and product-service systems. This conception, which focuses on securing sustained earnings through services besides the one-off sale of products, originates in the change of customers’ requirements and is driven to a great extent by the reallocation of risks and incentives. In a business environment characterized by increased uncertainty, the aspects “availability” and “flexibility” of an Industrial Product-Service System are thus of special significance. Here, the classical term “production system” is consciously replaced by the term “Industrial Product-Service System” (IPSS) which, according to its definition, is characterized by a life-cycle-oriented integration of the industrial supply of products and service parts [1]. This substitution of the term which is discussed both in academic and in industrial circles as well as a currently high publication density regarding the issue of use-oriented business models raises the following questions (Fig. 1): • What is the relationship between uncertainty, use-oriented business models and IPSS? • What is the significance of the aspect flexibility in use-oriented business models and how can flexibility be integrated into IPSS? • How can IPSS be designed in an economically sensible way and how can you quantify the value of flexibility of IPSS? The remainder of the article is organized as follows. In Section 2 we motivate for the dominance of use-oriented business models over traditional ones from the perspective of incentive theory. Section 3 gives a short review of the related literature. Afterwards Section 4 highlights the significance of flexibility for Industrial Product-Service Systems and shows how flexibility can be integrated into the system design. In Section 5 a superordinate reference value with the economic value is introduced by means of which the process of determining the ideal degree of flexibility can be supported. The real option concept to quantify flexibility is explained in Section 6 and applied to questions of modularization in design in Section 7. Finally, conclusions and implications for (managerial) practice and future research are offered in Section 8.

The contracts for regulating customer-supplier relations which remain incomplete on account of being of a long-term nature and therefore being uncertain imply problems regarding incentives and thus inefficiencies. In particular, through re-allocating property rights and decision rights it is possible to allocate incentives and risks more evenly in use-oriented business models and to align the customer's and the supplier's interests. The advantages of a re-allocation of incentives and risks in use-oriented business models lie in a reduction of total cost of ownership, an increase of equipment availability as well as an increase of the equipment performance. However, the development and implementation of an IPSS is associated with high investment costs, but the benefits of this investment are determined during the operating stage. That is, the IPSS first is implemented, after which the exact amount and nature of changes are made to the initial design. For that reason only the inclusion of flexibility in design allows long-term performance contracts, which cannot cover all contingencies in the future. In doing so, contrary to the general economic contract theory the contractual incompleteness is not associated with the risk of opportunistic behavior, but rather is understood as a chance. Thus, flexible designed IPSS are able to create a win-win situation for the parties involved in the business relation. The article reveals the significance of flexibility and describes the possibility of determining the value and therefore the ideal extent of flexibility of such a system by means of the real option approach. In particular, through determining both the business model and the IPSS, it can be assured that these are not synonyms, but two constructs which complement one another. Future research needs a combined view on the design of an IPSS and business models. The objective is to have a better understanding of the relation between the design of an IPSS and the inter-firm governance structure. A first approach was provided by Richter and Steven who specify the dominance of use- and result-oriented models subject to the complexity of product design [21].