Applicability of Agent-based Modeling for Supporting Product-service System Development

In comparison to traditional product development the concept of product-service systems (PSS) integrates the traditional functionality of a product with services. This offers several advantages for involved stakeholders, such as added value for the customers and long-term customer relationships or more sustainable products by long-term product lifecycles. This conceptual change results in new challenges for the development and organization of PSS. This paper discusses PSS development and modeling as well as indicates limitations in tools and methods to model and simulate dynamic behavior of PSS based on literature. The approach of agent-based modeling (ABM) is a fairly new dynamic modeling approach and has been rarely discussed in PSS literature. As a bottom-up approach it represents system components as a collection of autonomous decision-making entities called agents. The agents have their own individual set of rules or behaviors by which they operate and interact with each other in a certain environment. These characteristic features seem to be a promising approach to support PSS development. The objective of this paper is to prove this assumption and to disclose areas where ABM can be used in PSS development. In this paper ABM is used to simulate the distribution of the e-bike sharing system PSSycle. The model shows on an exemplary use case of the PSSycle the minimal amount of e-bikes which should be distributed in a certain area to ensure an increasing user satisfaction with the PSSycle. The case study demonstrates the applicability of ABM to support PSS development. The results of the case study are also used to discuss further applications of ABM on PSS development.