Engineering companies are increasingly becoming providers of services. I want to help academics and practitioners understand this ‘servitization’, the challenges along the way and key success factors to ensure that integrated product-service offerings actually are better for the companies, their customers and the environment.
Johannes Matschewsky
Associate Professor, Head of Unit
Integrating products and services so that everybody wins! I strive to increase our understanding of how industrial companies design, offer and operate integrated product-service offerings for the benefit of customers, providers and the environment.
Efficient and successful product-service solutions
Short summary
Academic merits
- Tech. Lic., Environmental technology and management, Linköping University, 2016
- Dipl.-Ing.(FH), Mechanical Engineering, University of Applied Sciences Dresden, Germany, 2012
Awards
Ångpanneföreningens forskningsstiftelse – Travel stipend (2014)
Teaching
- TKMJ32 (IPSE)
- TKMJ46 (Miljödriven produktutveckling)
Publications
2025
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2024
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2023
Research
Products and services in a competitive world
Combined offerings of products and services (Product-Service Systems, PSS) are important in our day for several reasons: In an ever faster moving world, only selling a physical object is not enough anymore.
Imagine your smartphone without the app store. It would just be an empty shell, waiting to be filled. The same is true in the larger engineering companies that I focus on in my work. Logistics companies do not want to buy a forklift truck any more, they want to be sure that the truck is ready to go whenever needed, that there is the right number of trucks available at any time, that repair happens fast and without them noticing. Only companies that can provide these kinds of services can survive on the very competitive markets of today, and I want to support the companies I work with in mastering this challenge.
Tackling challenges, finding solutions
If we want to succeed in having a flourishing business world and maintaining our natural resources, we have to aim for a circular economy. Everyone consumer knows car sharing, but even companies are increasingly looking towards services to make their operations more effective. In my research, I aim to understand what makes companies succeed on this path we call ‘servitization’, and what challenges they meet along the way. Getting to grips with this is key, so that we as academics can recommend strategies for the design and operation of these product-service offerings that ensure they are good for the company providing them, for the customer buying them, and, at scale, for everyone on the planet.
Customer – Provider – Environment
Ensuring that all parties involved in a business transaction (Customer, Provider, and Environment) benefit from it is no easy feat. By working with large Swedish and international companies, I want to find out what makes them successful on their path towards becoming a service provider, and where they have room to improve, particularly when it comes to how they design and operate their product-service offerings. Of course, I also try to support their success by disseminating knowledge and identifying best practices. My ultimate measure of success would be, through my academic work and the work with industry, to contribute to us actually achieving a balance between service-customers, -providers and the environment that can support us towards a more sustainable future.
Teaching
Student centric and cutting edge
A mechanical engineer by education, I try to open the eyes of students studying in engineering- and environmental disciplines to the technical, environmental and economic challenges we are facing, and support them in acquiring the knowledge and tools to solve these challenges in their future working life.
My teaching activities are centered on EcoDesign and Product-Service Systems (Integrated Product-Service Offerings). I aim for an interactive and engaging teaching style that is focused on co-creating relevant knowledge and skills with students using recent research in terms of content and didactics.
I am most active in planning and teaching both lectures and the project in the course TKMJ32 (Integrated Product-Service Engineering), while I also hold lectures and exercises in TKMJ46 (EcoDesign, in Swedish) and other related courses. I have supervised a number of bachelor and master theses and I occasionally discuss my work and its goals as an inspirational speaker, e.g. in fall of 2016 for high school students at Berzeliusskolan in Linköping.