A first approach on modelling staff proactiveness in retail simulation models

There has been a noticeable shift in the relative composition of the industry in the developed countries in recent years; manufacturing is decreasing while the service sector is becoming more important. However, currently most simulation models for investigating service systems are still built in t...

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Main Authors: Siebers, Peer-Olaf, Aickelin, Uwe
Format: Article
Published: University of Surrey, Department of Sociology 2011
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1521/
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author Siebers, Peer-Olaf
Aickelin, Uwe
author_facet Siebers, Peer-Olaf
Aickelin, Uwe
author_sort Siebers, Peer-Olaf
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description There has been a noticeable shift in the relative composition of the industry in the developed countries in recent years; manufacturing is decreasing while the service sector is becoming more important. However, currently most simulation models for investigating service systems are still built in the same way as manufacturing simulation models, using a process-oriented world view, i.e. they model the flow of passive entities through a system. These kinds of models allow studying aspects of operational management but are not well suited for studying the dynamics that appear in service systems due to human behaviour. For these kinds of studies we require tools that allow modelling the system and entities using an object-oriented world view, where intelligent objects serve as abstract “actors” that are goal directed and can behave proactively. In our work we combine process-oriented discrete event simulation modelling and object-oriented agent based simulation modelling to investigate the impact of people management practices on retail productivity. In this paper, we reveal in a series of experiments what impact considering proactivity can have on the output accuracy of simulation models of human centric systems. The model and data we use for this investigation are based on a case study in a UK department store. We show that considering proactivity positively influences the validity of these kinds of models and therefore allows analysts to make better recommendations regarding strategies to apply people management practises.
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spelling nottingham-15212020-05-04T20:24:33Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1521/ A first approach on modelling staff proactiveness in retail simulation models Siebers, Peer-Olaf Aickelin, Uwe There has been a noticeable shift in the relative composition of the industry in the developed countries in recent years; manufacturing is decreasing while the service sector is becoming more important. However, currently most simulation models for investigating service systems are still built in the same way as manufacturing simulation models, using a process-oriented world view, i.e. they model the flow of passive entities through a system. These kinds of models allow studying aspects of operational management but are not well suited for studying the dynamics that appear in service systems due to human behaviour. For these kinds of studies we require tools that allow modelling the system and entities using an object-oriented world view, where intelligent objects serve as abstract “actors” that are goal directed and can behave proactively. In our work we combine process-oriented discrete event simulation modelling and object-oriented agent based simulation modelling to investigate the impact of people management practices on retail productivity. In this paper, we reveal in a series of experiments what impact considering proactivity can have on the output accuracy of simulation models of human centric systems. The model and data we use for this investigation are based on a case study in a UK department store. We show that considering proactivity positively influences the validity of these kinds of models and therefore allows analysts to make better recommendations regarding strategies to apply people management practises. University of Surrey, Department of Sociology 2011 Article PeerReviewed Siebers, Peer-Olaf and Aickelin, Uwe (2011) A first approach on modelling staff proactiveness in retail simulation models. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 14 (2). pp. 1-25. ISSN 1460-7425 http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/14/2/2.html
spellingShingle Siebers, Peer-Olaf
Aickelin, Uwe
A first approach on modelling staff proactiveness in retail simulation models
title A first approach on modelling staff proactiveness in retail simulation models
title_full A first approach on modelling staff proactiveness in retail simulation models
title_fullStr A first approach on modelling staff proactiveness in retail simulation models
title_full_unstemmed A first approach on modelling staff proactiveness in retail simulation models
title_short A first approach on modelling staff proactiveness in retail simulation models
title_sort first approach on modelling staff proactiveness in retail simulation models
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1521/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1521/