Life cycle simulation to support cross-disciplinary decision making in early PSS design

The development of early-stage simulation capabilities is a critical step in the quest for ‘frontloading’ early stage PSS design activities, so to reduce the cost and risk for rework associated with sub-optimal decisions. This paper describes how life cycle simulations, based on a Discrete Event approach, can be applied to support cross-disciplinary decision making in PSS design, facilitating the identification of the most valuable hardware configuration for a given business model. The proposed approach is exemplified in a case study related to the design of a zero-emission asphalt compactor, which is part of a product-oriented and use-oriented PSS offer. Co-located physical meetings and interviews with industrial practitioners highlight the role played by DES as an enabler for leveraging tacit knowledge sharing across roles and disciplines in the organization, making possible to explore the design space with more rigor. They further reveal the need to exploit data mining techniques and to develop new constructs so to inform decision makers of maturity and impact of models used in a specific decision scenario.