“An Industrial Product-Service System is characterized by the integrated and mutually  determined planning, development, provision and use of product and service shares including its immanent software components in Business-to-Business applications and represents a knowledge-intensive socio-technical system.” – Meier, Roy, Seliger (2010)
Since the first conference in 2009, the CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems has become a well-established international forum for the review and discussion of advances, research results and industrial improvements. Researchers from all over the world have met at previous IPS² conferences in Cranfield (2009), Linköping (2010), Braunschweig (2011) and Tokyo (2012). In 2013, the 5^th CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems is held in Bochum. Important topics of IPS² research presented at the conference are: planning and development, sustainability, business models, operation, service engineering, knowledge management, ICT, modeling and simulation, marketing and economic aspects as well as the role of the human in IPS².