System Dynamics simulation applied to Product-Service Systems: a literature review

Manufacturing companies are increasingly offering Product-Service Systems (PSS) to their customers in view of the ability of these solutions to generate added value. The development and delivery of PSS are oriented to adapt the offerin g to the evolving customer requests, allowing companies to differentiate from competitors, gain higher customer loyalty and trust, and generate new revenues streams. The attention to the customers needs is an essential element of this offer, but to be sustainable for the company it has to be feasible also at the economic level. Thus, it is important to support the identification of the trade-off between effectiveness and efficiency of a PSS and to guide decision-makers. In this context, simulation-based modelling could be exploited as a tool for the decision-making process at strategic level. Among the paradigms of the simulation methodologies, System Dynamics (SD) is a continuous-time simulation approach used to explore complex systems and to make considerations at the strategic level. A literature review focused on the utilization of the SD approach to determine the PSS feasibility is presented. The aim is to provide an insight into the main SD applications related to the PSS context and define the common aspects taken into consideration in the modelling. In this study, SD is presented as a valuable tool to address the structural complexity of PSS and to measure the long-term dynamics of these systems comprehensively.