Service Engineering Methodology and Energy Services: Applicability Analysis and Case Study

In recent years, the economic and financial crises have been slowing down the growth of international markets. The resulting necessity to increase competitiveness has forced manufacturing industries to rethink their offer portfolio, also implementing servitization strategies. In particular, given the dramatic raise of customers' awareness as regards environmental and energy problems, the energy industry is also considering the provision of Product-Service System (PSS) solutions (i.e. The bundle of energy services to energy efficiency related products) as a profitable alternative. However, the design of PSS and in particular of the service content of the offer is a challenging activity, mainly due to the fact that services are by definition characterized by high level of intangibility and perishability, and to the fact that standard tools and methodologies for service engineering are not available. The SErvice Engineering Methodology (SEEM) [1] aims at supporting companies in these design and implementation phases. The methodology is in its development phase and its applicability in industry has been mainly tested in one specific context. This paper deals with the application of SEEM in the context of Energy Services (ESs) where the design phase can be much more complex than in other areas due to the variety of industries offering this kind of services and to the number of stakeholders involved during the service provision. In particular, this paper refers to a specific ES (the provision of data elaboration and analysis to energy consumption monitoring and control purposes) marketed together with energy meters. The general aim of this work is to provide a first analysis and a general understanding of the applicability of this existing methodology to the ES field by the mean of a real case study. In the paper, main steps of the application of the SEEM to the case study are described and discussed, to highlight main criticalities. In the end, a critical analysis is provided in order to put the basis to generalize the insights of this work to additional Energy Services.