Partners: Oras (manufacturer), SRV (construction company / lifecycle service provider)
Country: Finland
What was piloted?
Oras and SRV piloted a product-as-a-service model for faucets and showers in a public learning centre in Kirkkonummi. Oras delivers the products, installation and lifecycle maintenance, repair and refurbishment as a service to SRV’s lifecycle project. When a unit breaks or reaches end-of-life on site, it is swapped as needed from a “circular stock”, and the original is sent back to the factory for repair and reintroduction. With this solution, faucets are immediately usable after replacement, minimizing time spent on on-site troubleshooting and user disruption. It also saves materials, since the entire faucet does not need to be discarded or recycled due to a single faulty part. Connected sensor and IoT capabilities enable usage data, alerts and predictive maintenance, including water-flushing routines that prevent microbial growth during long school holidays.
Challenges and how they were tackled
Designing a business model that works commercially for every actor. Immediate benefits go to the installer and end customer, while Oras carries the cost of organising take-back, refurbishment and logistics. The team treated the operational and business model as the core of the pilot, invested most of the time in planning, and worked out how Oras can be compensated for coordination.
Reverse logistics. The team mapped and tested the reverse flow in real conditions.
Risk of cannibalising stakeholder sales revenue. When faucets and showers are delivered as a service with focus on repairs, traditional income from replacement sales is reduced for the whole industry chain of manufacturer, wholesaler and installer. The team flagged this as a scaling consideration and is working on how to bring installers into the model as service partners rather than displaced parties.
Key learnings
Product-as-a-service works as a circular operating model for faucets and showers, keeping products in productive use for longer.
The model simplifies responsibility on site: a single operational point of contact at Oras replaces multi-party warranty handovers between developer, maintenance company, installer and manufacturer.
The value proposition lands particularly well with lifecycle-contract property owners that must keep buildings operational year-round.
Plan the operational model carefully; execution is the easy part.
Connected products are an enabler, not a feature. Regulatory or financial drivers will accelerate adoption.
Solution scaling probability: 3.5 / 5
Oras will finalise the pilot within six months and decide on commercial expansion to additional sites. There are two priorities before scaling: designing the logistic chain at full operational scale and ensuring the business case is profitable for all stakeholders.
Invest most of the time to plan and discuss the operational model and processes; execution is the easy part. The pilot is successful because we eventually found a way to make it tangible and cost efficient for both parties, and the next step is to make the business case solid.
— Juhani Lempinen, Group Product Manager, Oras
The pilot implementation has been successful and shows promising results in improving service efficiency and transparency. However, further use is needed to validate outcomes and clarify actual costs.
— Marek Daszyński, Project Director, Lifecycle Projects, SRV