Assessing Manufacturing SMEs’ Readiness to Implement Service Design

This paper presents the initial results of a wider research project that investigates how service design might positively contribute to the development of product-service systems within manufacturing small to medium sized enterprises. The paper presents the results of interviews with three firms that have begun to embrace service design. The analysis of these results is used to produce a conceptual framework with nine dimensions that aims to aid understanding of a company's potential readiness for servitization through service design.