Jennifer Kingston

State-of-the-art in product service-systems

Abstract A Product-Service System (PSS) is an integrated combination of products and services. This Western concept embraces a service-led competitive strategy, environmental sustainability, and the basis to differentiate from competitors who simply offer lower priced products. This paper aims to report the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature is classified and the major outcomes of each study are addressed and analysed. On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features, gives examples of applications along with potential benefits and barriers to adoption, summarizes available tools and methodologies, and identifies future research challenges.

Challenges in transforming manufacturing organisations into product‐service providers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present challenges experienced by UK manufacturing companies undergoing a servitization journey to becoming product‐service providers.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses an exploratory single‐case study approach based on semi‐structured interviews, and archival data. A total of 22 senior managers were interviewed from the product‐service provider and its two suppliers, resulting in more than 400 pages of interview data. Data were analysed through an inductive research analysis by an emergent identification of patterns.Findings – This research identifies critical and frequent challenges experienced by UK manufacturing companies undergoing a servitization journey to becoming product‐service system (PSS) providers. They are condensed into five pillars, which constitute the architecture of challenges in servitization. The architecture of challenges in servitization provides a full description of the strategy and operations of PSSs.Research limitations/implica...

Elements of Change in the Transformation towards Product Service Systems

This paper presents a set of challenges in the transformation of a traditional manufacturer into a product service system provider. These challenges constitute the main elements of change in the transformation. The paper forms part of the development of a transformation model for servitization and advances prior conceptual research on the shift from a product-centric mode to a servitized one. This is qualitative research based on data collected from 41 industry and academic experts. Nine elements of change were identified, which will allow industry practitioners, who take on the journey of servitization to understand, analyse and plan their organisation’s transformation.

6U CubeSat commercial applications

Recent work by Tsitas and Kingston (1) has demonstrated that an 8kg 6U CubeSat can be designed to perform Earth observation missions equivalent to those of 50-150kg microsatellites. Their design is reviewed and its commercial potential is compared to the 156kg RapidEye spacecraft. Three other commercial applications of this design are described. These are: a standard spacecraft for space scientists and astronomers; the spacecraft component of an N nation 5 spectral band disaster monitoring constellation and a night imaging satellite. Nanosatellites should now be considered for commercial missions previously thought to require microsatellites.

6U CubeSat design for Earth observation with 6.5m GSD, five spectral bands and 14Mbps downlink

The design of a 6U CubeSat including spacecraft systems and imaging payload is described for an Earth observation mission. From a Sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of 600km the design enables imaging with a 6.5m GSD, an optical MTF (on axis) of >59% at half Nyquist and >35% at Nyquist, a 26km swath, 12 bit digitisation and SNR of 120-200:one in five spectral bands; blue, green, red, red edge and near infrared. Data can be downlinked at the rate of 14 Mbps to a 3.7m S band ground station. This design allows an 8kg CubeSat to perform Earth observation missions equivalent to those of current 50-150kg microsatellites, with a corresponding reduction in cost.

Descending Sun-Synchronous Orbits with Aerodynamic Inclination Correction

Earth observation spacecraft use sun-synchronous orbits because they enable observations of ground targets with similar illumination conditions over different passes. To achieve these orbits, spacecraft shall be orbiting the Earth at a particular inclination, which is a function of the orbiting altitude. In the low-Earth-orbit range, spacecraft experience aerodynamic drag, which makes the spacecraft orbit decay while the orbit inclination remains unchanged, hence loosing the sun-synchronous aspect of the orbit if no corrective measures are taken. A novel method is proposed whereby the sun-synchronous inclination is maintained, using aerodynamic lift, while the spacecraft decays due to aerodynamic drag. To achieve it, a lift-to-drag ratio in the range of 1.0–1.6 is required. This lift-to-drag ratio is not feasible with currently characterized surface properties but it may be achievable in the future. To apply this method in the present, propulsion that partially compensates the drag would be required to lo...