Evaluation of discrete event simulation software to design and assess service delivery processes

One of the major difficulties encountered by companies nowadays is related to the engineering of service and product-service systems (PSS), including the definition of methods and techniques supporting their design and development. It is noteworthy to state that, in order to make PSS and service provision profitable in the long term, it is of utmost relevance to balance the excellence in the value provided to the customer withahighefficiencyandproductivityoftheserviceprocesses.Inthisrespect,weposit that Discrete Event Simulation (DES) can effectively support managers in defining this equilibrium. Since the major simulation tools have been originally developed to simulate manufacturing processes, the purpose of this paper is to perform a comparative analysis between four simulation software packages, evaluating which one is the most suitable to be used in the PSS and service contexts. Thanks to the data collected in a real case (Take-a-way food shop with home-delivery) a comparison of the simulators, based on a selection of criteria from the literature and on specific features of service process, has been performed. The real case helped to shed the light on strengths and weaknesses of the analysed simulation software in supporting the design of a service process.