Abstract
This research investigated the simulation model behaviour of a traditional and combined discrete event as well as agent based simulation models when modelling human reactive and proactive behaviour in human centric complex systems. A departmental store was chosen as human centric complex case study where the operation system of a fitting room in WomensWear department was investigated. We have looked at ways to determine the efficiency of new management policies for the fitting room operation through simulating the reactive and proactive behaviour of staff towards customers. Once development of the simulation models and their verification had been done, we carried out a validation experiment in the form of a sensitivity analysis. Subsequently, we executed a statistical analysis where the mixed reactive and proactive behaviour experimental results were compared with some reactive experimental results from previously published works. Generally, this case study discovered that simple proactive individual behaviour could be modelled in both simulation models. In addition, we found the traditional discrete event model performed similar in the simulation model output compared to the combined discrete event and agent based simulation when modelling similar human behaviour.
Highlights
Simulation has become a preferred tool in Operation Research (OR) for modelling complex systems
As an overall conclusion of our reactive compared to mixed reactive and proactive experiments, we found that there are no differences between the Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and DES/Agent Based Simulation (ABS) models' output performance when modelling similar human behaviour
This paper has presented simulation as a tool to investigate the impact of human reactive and proactive service behaviour in the retail sector
Summary
Simulation has become a preferred tool in Operation Research (OR) for modelling complex systems. Reactive behaviour refers to response of an available staff member to the customers’ requests while proactive behaviour relates to a staff member’s personal initiative in identifying and solving an issue In retail, both behaviours; proactive, play important roles in an organisation's ability to generate income and revenue. Our general aim was to investigate the usefulness of modelling human reactive and proactive behaviour in the retail performance using a combined DES/ABS approach. We produced a research question: What are the similarities and dissimilarities can be identified by modelling human reactive behaviour compared to both human reactive and proactive behaviour in the simulation output performance? This paper focused on abilities of traditional DES and combined DES/ABS in representing the impact of mixed reactive and proactive staff behaviour on system performance.
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