Abstract
From a business perspective Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) can contribute to process innovation, product innovation or business model innovation. In this paper, the focus is on business model innovation based on CPS, i.e. we take the perspective of enterprises using CPS as basis for new customer services. In order to create viable CPS solutions, stakeholders from different enterprise functions should be involved, including business perspective and technical perspective. However, the business-related stakeholders often do not understand the technical possibilities and the technology-related stakeholders do understand the business opportunities. The paper proposes to use feature models as mediation support between business-oriented and technology-oriented stakeholders. Feature models conventionally are used for controlling variability, i.e. as a means for engineers to plan and design features for configuration and implementation. We propose to use them as a way to identify value propositions based on features. The main contributions of the paper are (a) to identify the potential feature models for alignment of business and technology-related stakeholders, (b) to propose feature model “slices” as support for business model development of CPS, and (c) an industrial case illustrating feasibility and utility of the approach.
Paper Type
Event
Feature Models as Support for Business Model Implementation of Cyber-Physical Systems
From a business perspective Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) can contribute to process innovation, product innovation or business model innovation. In this paper, the focus is on business model innovation based on CPS, i.e. we take the perspective of enterprises using CPS as basis for new customer services. In order to create viable CPS solutions, stakeholders from different enterprise functions should be involved, including business perspective and technical perspective. However, the business-related stakeholders often do not understand the technical possibilities and the technology-related stakeholders do understand the business opportunities. The paper proposes to use feature models as mediation support between business-oriented and technology-oriented stakeholders. Feature models conventionally are used for controlling variability, i.e. as a means for engineers to plan and design features for configuration and implementation. We propose to use them as a way to identify value propositions based on features. The main contributions of the paper are (a) to identify the potential feature models for alignment of business and technology-related stakeholders, (b) to propose feature model “slices” as support for business model development of CPS, and (c) an industrial case illustrating feasibility and utility of the approach.
Recommended Citation
Sandkuhl, K. (2018). Feature Models as Support for Business Model Implementation of Cyber-Physical Systems. In B. Andersson, B. Johansson, S. Carlsson, C. Barry, M. Lang, H. Linger, & C. Schneider (Eds.), Designing Digitalization (ISD2018 Proceedings). Lund, Sweden: Lund University. ISBN: 978-91-7753-876-9. http://aisel.aisnet.org/isd2014/proceedings2018/eHealth/5.