Business transformation of SMEs from “product supplier” to “value provider” supported by an extended product business model

The transition from "product supplier" to "value provider" can be seen as the most relevant challenge for industrial enterprises. New integrated product and service approaches are needed to enable this paradigm shift. The extended product represents an integrated approach for tangible products and intangible product assets. The paper presents a structure and an abstract conceptual model that represents the business and money- earning logic of a company based on the extended products paradigm. The intention of this paper is to encourage adoption of the extended product model and to motivate the transition process from product supplier to value creation provider within traditional manufacturing SMEs. An extended product model and module is introduced. Using a well- known business model the paper proposes the extended product business model ontology as a vehicle for SMEs to create viable business from service offerings.