Decision support system for servitization of industrial SMEs: a modelling and simulation approach
Abstract
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 changes affect most enterprise performance drivers, and the interactions of the multiple business and industrial factors influencing the overall company performance make it very difficult for managers to specify consistent and efficient industrial configurations for their business processes. This context explains a concrete need for developing servitisation-dedicated decision support systems (DSS). The objective of the decision aid developed in this paper is to provide operational support which integrates the specific business and industrial features of so-called ‘product–service systems’ in order to study the interactions of different types of performance factors, notably market-oriented versus industrial-oriented factors. These developments are applied to a French Small and Medium Enterprise (SME). The key added values of the paper are (1) to specify a modelling and simulation approach associated to a generic simulator adaptable to various industrial contexts, then (2) to illustrate the concrete decision support provided in a case study of an SME in the business of remanufacturing electrical equipment. The case study highlights capacity management issues in a servitisation context.