Interrelation Between Resilience and Sustainability in Smart Service Systems

Over the years, manufacturing companies have been transforming themselves due to the evolving needs of customers, stringent regulations, as well as competition from tech-based companies. Once, the focus for Manufacturing companies was optimization of cost, without compromising the quality of their products. Then came the wave of digitalization and companies started adopting digital technologies to make their products, a Smart Product, offering superior customer experience and customer lock-in. Combining services with these smart products led to new business models with differentiation and competitive advantage. Post COVID-19, resiliency became the focus and companies accelerated digitalization to modify themselves to be able to withstand unprecedented disruptions caused by natural or human-caused disasters and pandemics. All the while, sustainability remained of importance and took center stage now with global targets and policies. Manufacturing companies understand that sustainability cannot be achieved without the combined efforts of stakeholders in the ecosystem, and it is not to be looked at as a separate initiative anymore. In this paper, we aim to look at four case study companies offering smart services and assess them based on frameworks from literature on the aspects of sustainability and resilience factors and identify relationship between them. Upon assessment, the recommendations were derived on improving the sustainability aspects and resiliency as well as looked at additional factors required for the assessment to arrive at an optimal state of resilience and sustainability.