The impact of servitization on Italian manufacturing companies

Servitization can be defined as the process of innovating company’s capabilities and processes to support the shift from selling product to selling Product-Service Systems (PSS), i.e. integrated offerings of products and services. This process of manufacturing companies has been recognised to provide many advantages, including increasing the value of the offerings, developing customers’ loyalty, generating profits throughout the whole product life cycle, etc. Despite the many studies related to this process and its effects, there is a major lack concerning its quantification. This paper aims at filling this lack through an in-depth analysis of medium-large size Italian companies in the manufacturing sector. In detail, this study offers (i) an analysis of servitization process extent in terms of percentage of servitized companies (ii) a taxonomy of the services offered and (iii) an estimation of their relative diffusion. Also, the paper discusses a perspective on the effects that this process may have on production technologies and systems