Xavier Boucher

• Prof. Dr.-Ing.
• Professor at Mines Saint-Étienne

In the past years, the convergence between digitalisation and servitization, driven by Industry 4.0 paradigms, has led to Smart PSS offerings. To implement smart PSS, distinct business models can be considered, for instance based on product rental or leasing. This change of business paradigm affects all kinds of companies. It is notably the case fo...

Pre-trained large language models (LLMs) have gained significant attention in the field of natural language processing (NLP), especially for the task of text summarization, generation, and question answering. The success of LMs can be attributed to the attention mechanism introduced in Transformer models, which have outperformed traditional recurre...

This article presents a method for evaluating the environmental benefits of implementing Product-Service Systems (PSSs) and Smart PSS with application to the heating systems field. The proposed PSS-oriented life cycle assessment method aims at addressing the specificities of PSS and Smart PSS, representing PSS variety and dealing with uncertainty s...

Fault analysis (FA) is the process of collecting and analyzing data to determine the cause of a failure. It plays an important role in ensuring the quality in manufacturing process. Traditional FA techniques are time-consuming and labor-intensive, relying heavily on human expertise and the availability of failure inspection equipment. In semiconduc...

The comparative assessment of alternative Product-Service-Systems (PSS) economic models is an important objective to be integrated along the design process of smart PSS. Economic assessment of smart PSS delivery networks can support economic risk mitigation and help decision-makers in establishing collaborative mechanisms for financial risk sharing...

Pre-trained Language Models recently gained traction in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) domain for text summarization, generation and question-answering tasks. This stems from the innovation introduced in Transformer models and their overwhelming performance compared with Recurrent Neural Network Models (Long Short Term Memory (LSTM)). In thi...

At the heart of industry 4.0, industrials are developing integrated offers of “Smart Product-Service Systems”. Many industrial firms are moving toward product-service systems (PSS) due to their capacity to involve value systems, business models, boundary spanning, dynamic capabilities, and other factors leading to reduced environmental impacts. In...

In the semiconductor industry, Failure Analysis (FA) is an investigation to determine the root causes of a failure. It also involves an intermediate analysis to build the steps of the failure analysis in order to mitigate future failures and to facilitate the future FA. In the framework of the FA 4.0 project, the reporting system records three item...

Variational autoencoders (VAEs) have recently been used for unsupervised disentanglement learning of complex density distributions. Numerous variants exist to encourage disentanglement in latent space while improving reconstruction. However, none have simultaneously managed the trade-off between attaining extremely low reconstruction error and a hi...

Companies are seeking more and more to offer customized goods and services to customers to be able to satisfy their needs. Several methods emerged to fulfill the needs of customization without affecting the performance of the company. Modularity has been considered as an effective method to address the challenges regarding variety management in the...

Greenhouse gas emissions are a major problem for the environment. One of the vital activities to reduce the emissions is including the circular economy (CE) approaches like reuse and remanufacture in disassembled products to recovering End-of-life products. In this paper, we consider CE in the disassembly of products not only to reduce CO2 emission...

Organizations are increasingly working on business processes improvement to meet stakeholders’ requirement. Process engineering and improvement projects are challenged by identifying proper metrics to guide improvement efforts and mitigate process complexity. This latter is intuitively related to factors such as usability, modularity, reliability a...

Microelectronics production failure analysis is a time-consuming and complicated task involving successive steps of analysis of complex process chains. The analysis is triggered to find the root cause of a failure and its findings, recorded in a reporting system using natural language. Fault analysis, physical analysis, sample preparation and packa...

Recent economic transformations have forced companies to redefine their value propositions, increasing traditional product offerings with supplementary services—the so-called Product-Service System (PSS). Among them, the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies is very common. However, the directions that companies are undertaking to offer new value t...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2021, held in Saint-Étienne, and virtually in November 2021. The 70 papers (15 full and 55 short) presented with 5 industrial workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 189 submissions. They provide a comprehensiv...

Digital technologies are encouraging manufacturing companies in their servitization process by accelerating the offer of integrated product and service to create new value and grow relationships with customers in the Industry 4.0 era. In parallel, digitalization and servitization research streams are merging and paving the way for the Smart Product...

This paper explains the first steps of a smart PSS engineering approach, aimed at eliciting stakeholder needs, prototyping the value proposition, representing how the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) will capture value and share it with a collaborative network of stakeholders while identifying and prioritizing risks from the value proposition....

The paper introduces a Smart Innovation Environment for the devel-opment of Digital Twins and experimentation related to digital transformation projects, thus consolidating the "Digital Engineer" skill profile (with a business-oriented facet labelled as "Digital Innovator"). In the Internet of Things (IoT) era, this profile implies not only the abi...

This position paper introduces a Smart Innovation Environment for experimentation related to digital transformation projects, for the consolidation of a proposed “Digital Engineer” skill profile (with a business-oriented facet labelled as “Digital Innovator”). In the Internet of Things era, this profile implies the ability to perform both digital d...

This paper explains the first steps of a smart PSS engineering approach, aimed at eliciting stakeholder needs, prototyping the value proposition, representing how the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) will capture value and share it with a collaborative network of stakeholders while identifying and prioritizing risks from the value proposition....

The design of innovative offers involves deep collaboration between the provider and the customer to create higher value than in traditional offers. Product-Service Systems (PSS) are bundles of products and services and constitute innovative offers designed to fit complex customer needs. The academic literature on PSS development has a strong focus...

Reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS) emerged in literature during the last two decades with the aim to respond to the rapid increase in product demand and variations. The implementation of such solutions in the industry is very recent and remains difficult. In this article, an analysis of the industrial requirements and challenges involving f...

Manufacturers have started exploiting the benefits of Internet-of-things and Artificial intelligence to offer solutions known as "Smart PSS." Recently, smart PSS engineering frameworks have begun appearing. Those frameworks lack guidelines on how to conduct risk management activities throughout the design and development of a smart PSS solution. Th...

Purpose The paper proposes an innovative systemic method helping decision-makers to control servitization transition process, through decision process risk diagnosis. Design/methodology/approach The proposed method is based on the modeling of decision processes and risk identification and analysis. This method was based on an action-research appro...

Manufacturers have started exploiting the benefits of Internet-of-things and Artificial intelligence to offer solutions known as "Smart PSS." Recently, smart PSS engineering frameworks have begun appearing. Those frameworks lack guidelines on how to conduct risk management activities throughout the design and development of a smart PSS solution. Th...

During the early design stages of product-service systems (PSS), particular attention must be given to sustainability considerations to ensure the achievement of a sustainable PSS. However, there is a lack of decision-making support within existing design methods to help designers generating PSS solutions with reduced sustainability impact from the...

Based on an analysis of research and industrial trends, the paper introduces the basis of a conceptual research framework for an innovative methodology dedicated to design, implement and manage Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS). The authors present key challenges extracted from the literature and key industrial needs for RMS, drawn from ex...

Many manufacturers are in the process of evolving from mass production to mass customization to cope with the increasing diversity of customer requirements. This induces an increasing complexity resulting from the high variety offered to customers. This problem is heightened by integrating product and service within the same offering. Modularity is...

This paper presents a framework for addressing the challenge of economic value sharing among actors of Product-Service value networks. More specifically the framework is dedicated to the assessment of alternative collaborative value networks and their associated economic models, at the time of designing a product-service system (PSS). The framework...

Due to the increased diversity in customer requirements, many manufacturers are in the process of evolving from mass production to mass customization (MC) whereby products and services are tailored to specific customer needs. Even though MC strategy was described decades ago, its implementation within industry is hindered by the partial understandi...

PSS offerings are characterized by a high level of uncertainties due to the lack of information, in the design stage of the offer, about future events that the decision-makers will face. Such uncertainties must be anticipated to validate the profitability of PSS projects. In this paper, an approach to assess uncertainty is presented, then applied t...

Due to the increased diversity in customer requirements, many manufacturers are in the process of evolving from mass production to mass customization (MC) whereby products and services are tailored to specific customer needs. Even though MC strategy was described decades ago, its implementation within industry is hindered by the partial understandi...

Product-Service Systems (PSS) are one of the business innovation drivers in terms of increasing the value for the customer and for the actors involved in PSS provision. This paper reports on a framework for assessing the economic value out of PSS provision considering a multi-actor perspective. The originality of the proposed framework is twofold:...

Despite lots of advances on PSS design methods over the past ten years, this paper states that their larger use in industrial context remains confronted to a lack of integration among the diversity of methods and tools available and among the variety of concepts covered by PSS design. The paper aims at presenting a modelling approach and tool dedic...

Over the recent years, the growing research interest in Product-Service Systems (PSS) design and development methods has generated a large background of theoretical knowledge, conceptual methods and application case studies. After analysing the research gaps emerging for these advances, this paper propose a new integrated PSS design method, which i...

This paper addresses the needs of generic and shared PSS conceptual modelling approaches. The development of conceptual models for PSS is considered in this research as the basis to develop an integrated approach for PSS design. The objective of the paper is to present a generic PSS-dedicated meta-model, resulting from a procedure of integration of...

This paper addresses the needs of generic and shared PSS conceptual modelling approaches. The development of conceptual models for PSS is considered in this research as the basis to develop an integrated approach for PSS design. The objective of the paper is to present a generic PSS-dedicated meta-model, resulting from a procedure of integration of...

During the last three decades the manufacturing and social contexts knew significant changes, thus pushing companies to adapt their business models according to those changes. In this vein, a new trend emerged and consists of further customer driven operations management. This gave rise to innovative approaches such as mass customization which aims...

Les changements radicaux qui ont marqué les contextes industriel et social lors des dernières décennies ont poussé les entreprises manufacturières à adapter leurs modes de production en adoptant des stratégies plus innovantes comme la personnalisation de masse, et en s’orientant vers un modèle d’entreprise centré client. La personnalisation de mass...

The transition from a product–oriented business towards a PSS-oriented business, known in the scientific literature as ‘servitization’ involves complex changes for decision-makers. Over the past years, the scientific literature has provided consistent advances in PSS decision-support systems including PSS modelling. However, concerning PSS modellin...

Despite the growing research interest in PSS design and development methods in recent years, there is still no fully stabilized and shared understanding of the PSS design process. This can be partly explained by two main gaps: the decoupled design of product and services and the lack of operational solutions. This research aims at outlining the mai...

This paper reports a research work piece developed in collaboration with the semiconductor wafer production company: STMicroelectronics. This collaborative research programme aimed at implementing statistical methods, so as to improve business decisions focusing on capacity planning for information technology. The current paper presents the specifi...

This book draws new attention to domain-specific conceptual modeling by presenting the work of thought leaders who have designed and deployed specific modeling methods. It provides hands-on guidance on how to build models in a particular domain, such as requirements engineering, business process modeling or enterprise architecture. In addition to t...

This paper addresses enterprise modeling needs, in a specific field of industrial management: the design and management of industrial product-service-systems. During the last decade, the industrial sector has undergone a change of the business model, through an increasing internalisation of service activities in manufacturing companies. The objecti...

Despite the growing research interest in PSS design and development methods in recent years, there is still no fully stabilized and shared understanding of the PSS design process. This can be partly explained by two main gaps: the decoupled design of product and services and the lack of operational solutions. This research aims at outlining the mai...

The transition from a product–oriented business towards a PSS-oriented business, known in the scientific literature as ‘servitization’ involves complex changes for decision-makers. Over the past years, the scientific literature has provided consistent advances in PSS decision-support systems including PSS modelling. However, concerning PSS modellin...

Companies are increasingly selling functionalities of integrated solutions of products and services instead of selling mere products. This integration of products and service solutions is known as Product Service Systems (PSS), which allows to maximize customer value and overcome increasing competition in the manufacturing sector. In this sense, PS...

Companies are increasingly selling functionalities of integrated solutions of products and services instead of selling mere products. This integration of products and service solutions is known as Product Service Systems (PSS), which allows to maximize customer value and overcome increasing competition in the manufacturing sector. In this sense, PS...

Customers’ individual preferences are calling for greater variety of firms’ offerings. Faced with this situation, firms endeavour to meet customer requirements while reducing their costs and impact on the environment to remain competitive. The attainment of these goals entails various issues that must be addressed including multiple performance dri...

Purpose – Servitization of manufacturing is characterized by very complex decision processes within strongly unstable and uncertain decision contexts. Decision-makers are face situations of lack of internal and external information. The purpose of this paper is to develop a decision aid approach to support the management of servitization decision-m...

Industrial Product Service Systems (PSS) are a new concept offering strong opportunities both for business innovation and sustainability improvement. Coupling or even integrating industrial production and service delivering poses many innovative challenges for the manufacturing industry at the technological, organizational and even human level. In...

This paper proposes a framework relying on a combination of a methodological approach with a modelling and simulation platform. The methodological approach offers generic tools to collect and analyze the key information required to understand a PSS industrial context. Modelling and simulation are concerned with the specification and evaluation of a...

Customers’ individual preferences are calling for more variety of the firms offerings. Faced with this situation, firms endeavor to meet customer requirements while reducing their costs and impact on environment in order to remain competitive. Further on, achieving such a goal entails various issues that need to be tackled such as the multiple perf...

Resources depletion, emerging competition, and increasing individual customer requirements are among the most common trends shaping nowadays manufacturing industry. Product-Service Systems (PSS) are put forth as a potential means for meeting these challenges due to their intrinsic characteristics such as dematerialization, multi-actor perspective,...

The transition of manufacturing industry towards service, also called servitisation process, is currently spreading throughout the whole economy. Servitisation of large companies has been largely studied by the scientific literature, but still little is known more specifically regarding SMEs. Yet, in such context, Small and Medium Enterprise manage...

Product-Service Systems are increasingly emerging in response to market volatility and more demanding customer requirements. Their development process, however, is not as straightforward as for traditional physical goods. For instance, the configuration of a Product-Service System entails taking several factors into account, such as the points of v...

Logiciels et publications multimédia

Industry servitisation, i.e. the manufacturing industry transition towards the integration of services, provides for strong opportunities of new business model development and implementation. However, managing the industrial transformation to such business models means decision-makers are confronted with high decisional complexity. Such dramatic ch...

Product services systems (PSS) provide a promising opportunity for industries to propose both prosper and eco-friendly solutions to fulfill consumer needs. By shifting from traditional offer, comprised of physical products, to an integrated solution of product and services, it is assumed that PSS may reduce the environmental impact and provide bene...

Product-Service Systems are increasingly emerging in response to market volatility and more demanding customer requirements. Their development process, however, is not as straightforward as for traditional physical goods. For instance, the configuration of a Product-Service System entails taking several factors into account, such as the points of v...

Moving from selling goods to Product Service Systems (PSS) will promote coupling of environmental objectives with economic growth. However many difficulties hinder their implementation. Companies must rethink business models and replace value of exchange by value in use, involving long term relations. This paper proposes using ‘scenarios’ as a meth...

The paper proposes a methodology to support the organisational shift towards product Services Systems. Its backbone is the evaluation of economic impact of such a shift. However, in order to efficiently accommodate organisational changes and include company specificities, other steps are required prior to evaluation. These are context analysis, sce...

We propose to present some insights coming from our past research on a semiconductor wafer production plants. The general objective was to implement statistical methods, to improve business decisions. However, we rapidly discovered that introducing statistics in practice is not straightforward when people are not used to it. Consequently, we develo...

Logiciels et publications multimédia

Servitization decision process is characterized by a high degree of complexity and uncertainty. We propose a diagnosis approach applied to servitization decision making process in industrial companies. We introduce a decision model to formalize the servitization process and a decision reliability assessment approach. This reliability assessment is...

This paper discusses some aspects of the decisional challenges implied by the management of modern information technology (IT) systems. These rapidly evolving complex systems are crucial to the overall performance of industrial companies. Two challenges are delineated: (1) the complexity of modern systems requires a system-thinking approach; (2) th...

Ce travail de recherche vise à clarifier une démarche d'anticipation de la trajectoire décisionnelle d'une industrie en transition vers le modèle de servicisation. Nous proposons une modélisation du processus de transition à partir d'un cadre de modélisation de processus décisionnels d'entreprise (cadre et outils GRAI). La construction du modèle th...

Interoperability, understood in a broad sense as the ability of heterogeneous systems and organizations to coordinate their activities efficiently, is one of the pillars of enterprise collaboration. This special Issue, managed by the guest editors Prof Xavier Boucher (France) and Prof. Hamideh Afsarmanesh (Nethelands), has been published as a resul...

In this paper, we attempt to explain that Product Service Systems (PSS) are not based solely on technical and functional aspects, but that organizational and collaborative aspects are also involved. Thus, we propose a servitization analyzing approach that highlights the need to manage the complexity of the iconic functional and decisional areas rel...

Semiconductor manufacturing processes are known to be long and complex. Starting from a silicon wafer, multiple treatments are applied for about three months. Mastering the manufacturing process as well as a rapid identification of yield loss' causes are the keys to a successful semiconductor fabrication plant. The production cycle is composed of a...

Semiconductor production cycle is a combination of production and quality inspection steps. The collected data at these steps lead to huge amounts of data stored in heterogeneous databases. To identify yield loss' causes for a product X, we propose a three step approach that gives as a result a set of relational patterns, corresponding to potential...

http://cigi13.eigsi.fr/Documents/Articles/MH4/cigi2013_submission_16.pdf

ISBN 978-2-35671-073-4, http://www.emse.fr/%7Eleriche/ASLC_13_LutzLeRiche.pdf

Les procédés de fabrication en industrie du semi - conducteur sont connus pour être complexes et longs . À partir d'une plaquette de silicium, divers traitements sont appliqués pendant environ trois mois. Une parfaite maîtrise du processus de fabrication et l'identification rapide des causes de perte de rendement sont la clé de réussite d'un site d...

Le développement des approches statistiques d'aide à la décision à partir de l'instrumentation de systèmes artificiels ou naturels met en évidence un processus de création de connaissances qui, après avoir recueilli des données, procède à une réduction des caractéristiques autonomes de ces données pour les transformer en informations puis en connai...