Service System Design Research Articles

Institutional innovation essence and knowledge innovation goal of intellectual property law in the big data era

This work aims to expand the understanding on the nature of institutional innovation and the goal of knowledge innovation of intellectual property (IP) law in the era of big data (BD) and to avoid the risks of information security in the IP service system. On the basis of the era of BD, the nature of institutional innovation and the goal of knowledge innovation in IP law are systematically discussed. Combined with smart contract (SC) technology, an IP service system based on blockchain technology is designed to ensure the security of IP services. The SC is optimized from the perspective of concurrency, and the contract transactions (CTs) are clustered. Moreover, considering the execution time (ET) and available resources of CTs, a speculative concurrency control algorithm that can realize intelligent contract scheduling is proposed. On the basis of the ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) algorithm, a policy-updatable attribute encryption algorithm is designed. The improved CP-ABE algorithm includes six steps: system initialization, attribute private key generation, encryption, decryption, ciphertext policy generation, and ciphertext policy update. The identity parameter of the traceability manager is introduced into the improved CP-ABE scheme, which significantly increases the amount of computation of bilinear mapping, thus resulting in the time cost of encryption and decryption being approximately 350 ms and 300 ms higher than that of the CP-ABE scheme. Using the technical mode of “blockchain + SC,” the design of the IP service system is realized, which has important reference value for the institutional innovation of IP law.

Adaptability evaluation of conceptual design for smart product-service system: An integrated rough DEMATEL and Bayesian network model

Smart product service system (PSS) design evaluation plays a crucial role in the early design stage of Smart PSS development. It aims at considering the user's value proposition for Smart PSS in the dimensions of intelligence, sustainability, and society, while also ranking Smart PSS to support delivery risk management under uncertainty. However, related Smart PSS evaluation models advocate the use of multi-criteria decision models for obtaining the intrinsic value of PSS by ignoring the influence of the causality of criteria on Smart PSS design, which results in an unstable evaluation process. Additionally, the adaptiveness of Smart PSS has not been thoroughly explored, and determining the adoption intentions of Smart PSS can be challenging. To fill these gaps, a Smart PSS evaluation model that integrates a rough decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and a Bayesian network (BN) is proposed to support probabilistic reasoning for Smart PSS adaptiveness and reduce the risk of Smart PSS development. First, a set of 17 evaluation criteria is identified, and their causal relationships and weights of the criteria were identified using a rough DEMATEL under uncertainty. Second, a BN-based reasoning model for Smart PSS criteria is developed to evaluate the adaptability of smart PSS by constructing a conditional probability calculation model based on criterion weights. Finally, a multifunctional smart cooking center (MFSCC) case study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach. The belief propagation analysis results revealed the key criteria affecting the MFSCC service system development and provided design strategies to improve the adaptiveness of the Smart PSS.

Resilient Design of Product Service Systems with Automated Guided Vehicles

Automated guided vehicles undertake complex transportation tasks, for instance, in production and storage systems. In recent years, an increased focus on sustainability has occurred as the effects of ongoing climate change have become more apparent. Engineers are searching intensively for ways to design technical systems that are not only environmentally sustainable, but are also resilient to the challenges of the changing climate and other environmental conditions. The production of automated guided vehicles requires considerable resources; therefore, a long operation time is desirable for overall sustainability. The performance of transportation tasks requires certain processes, such as control, path planning, coordination/synchronization, and maintenance and update processes—the latter are also very important for a long operation time. This article proposes understanding these processes as services and to explore product service systems with automated guided vehicles. Due to their complexity, the efficient and safe operation of such systems can be at risk because of several factors, such as component faults, external attacks and disturbances. For several years both resilient control and resilience engineering have been researched as possible remedies. An extension of these two concepts to the early stages of system development processes and including the system’s hardware is proposed in this article. This extension is referred to as resilient design. A primary purpose of resilient design is sustainability through extended usability and planned updates. The main intention of this article is to provide a comprehensive understanding of resilient design through application to product service systems with automated guided vehicles. The basis for this contribution is an extensive literature review and detailed system analyses on different levels. The main research results include novel application modes for product development methods. The explanation of the results is supported by means of an illustrative example based on a product service system with automated guided vehicles.

Designing a Public API-Based Order Delivery Service System for the Food and Beverage Industry

The food and beverage (F&B) industry aims to satisfy customers' needs by providing food and beverages while continuously developing creative and innovative steps to stay competitive. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental impact on the industry's survival, with a reduction of more than one-third of their daily income. One reason for this decline is the decreased interest of customers to dine in restaurants. To mitigate further losses, the F&B industry must innovate its services to meet the needs of customers who prefer to enjoy food at home or work. Delivery service is a critical aspect that must be developed, and adopting the appropriate information technology (IT) for service delivery automation can provide an economical solution and added value to the F&B industry. This study proposes using public APIs to support and enhance the F&B industry's delivery service system. Specifically, the WhatsApp API is selected to automatically notify drivers to process deliveries. This paper presents the design of a public API-based order delivery service system for the F&B industry that can be integrated with existing systems.

Questioning global health in the times of COVID-19: Re-imagining primary health care through the lens of politics of knowledge

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and the inequitable response to it has created a space for rethinking the knowledge translation that informs current health policy formulation and planning. Wide recognition of the failure of global health governance and national health systems has led to calls for reviving the Primary Health Care (PHC) agenda for post-COVID health systems development. Despite the joint international declaration on PHC made four decades ago, it has had limited application. This paper argues that the recent attempts to rethink PHC will prove inadequate without analysing and learning from the politics of knowledge (PoK) underlying global health policy and planning. Even with the growing relevance of the spirit of the Alma-Ata Declaration (1978) and its operationalisation as detailed in the report of conference proceedings, reassessment of reasons for its limited implementation continues to be located largely in the political economy of the medical establishment, the international economic order or in national governance flaws. Failure to address the dominant knowledge paradigm in the Alma Ata articulation of PHC has contributed to its limited application. This calls for expansion in the analysis from knowledge translation to generation and hierarchisation of knowledge. The paper discusses how the application of PoK as an analytical lens helps understand the power equations underlying the process of knowledge generation and its translation into policy and practice. Beneath the techno-centric and commodified health system is the dominant ‘knowledge’ system whose foundations and assumptions ought to be interrogated. By following a PoK approach, a reorientation of thinking about the relationship between various forms of knowledge and knowledge holders is anticipated. A new health service system design is outlined—translating the spirit of PHC of 1978 into a ‘PHC Version 2.0’—that addresses the PoK gap in operational terms, with an approach to guide all levels of healthcare. It suggests how the world can be empowered to respond better by engaging with diverse ontologies and epistemologies to conceptualise knowledge and frame policies. Further, in the contexts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, it can contribute to the development of self-reliance to democratise general health policy and planning in the post-pandemic period.

Web-Based Design and Implementation of Service Systems for Public Health Centers

Information technology is now a necessity for society, including in the health sector at the Community Health Center (Puskesmas) information technology can be used to manage medical record data such as creating a web-based service information system. However, most of the management of puskesmas medical record units in Indonesia is still carried out using spreadsheet applications or still using paper records. The spreadsheet application also has drawbacks because the officers from the puskesmas also have to understand the formulas to use it even though they are not programmers. As in the Mardira Health Center, medical records are written on paper and recorded for archives, this is less efficient because data can be lost or damaged. Therefore this study aims to facilitate the process of managing medical record data such as storing and accessing data and reducing the risk of data damage due to disasters. This application is designed to be web based using the PHP (Pear Hypertext Preprocessor) programming language and MySQL as its database. In its manufacture, this application is tailored to the needs. The result of this application is a web-based health center service system that can search data quickly, modify data and generate reports easily. It is hoped that this application can facilitate the implementation of activities at the puskesmas and improve services to the community.

Tackling the Design of Platform-Based Service Systems, Integrating Data and Cultures: The Case of Urban Markets

Different design traditions address the design of services. When adopted alone, they can limit design, especially if services systems are complex. Some combinations among service design traditions are theorized in the literature and a cultural synthesis is considered a priority. This paper discusses a practical application of that synthesis: systematic/data-driven methods from engineering and service innovation are applied within a participatory and transformative environment. Intangible versus material and functional versus experience service elements are considered. The case study on urban markets shows that economics and the transactional/functional mechanics of a service system must be understood for proper design actions, and that overcoming separations between strands of literature is necessary to achieve this aim. Moreover, since urban markets are two-sided platforms in a physical setting, the study allows easier investigation than in modern digital platforms regarding how platform economics affect the design of a service system, providing insights for digital services as well. Originality is due to generally scant contributions on urban market design, since markets are often regulated, rather than designed, beyond the rare practical attempts of cultural synthesis.

Approximate models of air transport queueing systems with partial mutual assistance between service channels

Approximate analytical models are proposed for two types of multi-channel queuing systems with partial mutual assistance between channels and waiting in limited-size and unbounded queues. The incoming flow of requests is a superposition of several simplest flows. It is assumed that normative numbers of channels for servicing a customer that differ depending on the flow of incoming customer requests are established. In the systems of the first type the normative number of channels is not necessary: a customer is accepted for servicing if there are free channels in the system and the number of channels is smaller than the normative one. Service time is distributed exponentially with the average inversely proportional to the number of allocated channels. In systems of the second type the service of a customer is always performed by the channels of the normative number. Service time can be distributed arbitrarily (not only exponentially) with the average irrespective of the number of allocated channels. The paper presents the results of comparative analysis of the results of dealing with some tasks of designing service systems in a wide range of input data using simulation modelling and calculations based on approximate analytical models that allowed evaluating the application area of the latter and making a conclusion about their satisfactory accuracy. Examples of the use of models of technological processes of airport ground handling as queuing systems of the considered types are given.

Retracted: Design of an Interactive Two-Way Telemedicine Service System for Smart Home Care for the Elderly.

[This retracts the article DOI: 10.1155/2021/6632865.].

Conceptual design of a user-centric smart product-service system using self-organizing map

As an emerging IT-driven business paradigm, smart product-service system (Smart PSS), which offers not only the smart, connected product (SCP) but also its generated service as a solution bundle, has become a vital research topic. Many research efforts have been devoted to constructing the conceptual design framework by considering SCPs and services simultaneously. However, the following critical issues in Smart PSS conceptual design have not been well addressed: how to improve the solution of Smart PSS in the conceptual design stage to meet user emotional requirements. Aiming to fill the gap, this work proposes a conceptual design method for Smart PSS from the perspective of analyzing user-generated emotions/feelings. Specifically, the relevant traditional products are identified, and their public review data is used to analyze user emotions/feelings in user-product interaction. Interactive emotion board as a new design tool is presented to organize the user-generated emotions/feelings, associated design elements, and the potential design points of the initial solution. And the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is utilized to evaluate the improved solution. To ensure the efficiency of the analysis process, the self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm is utilized in the process of clustering product samples and Kansei words. A case study of smart electric bicycle service system (SEBSS) design is used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. Based on the case study, the proposed approach appears effective in helping with Smart PSS conceptual design.

A Methodology for the Design and Engineering of Smart Product Service Systems: An Application in the Manufacturing Sector

The combination of servitization and digitalization is increasingly changing the economy and society at the global level towards sustainability goals. Companies are shifting their business models, typically oriented to selling products, towards providing bundles of products and services and integrating them with technologies enabling data collection and analysis, resulting in the so-called smart Product Service Systems (PSS). Different approaches and techniques have been put forth to design PSS and, more recently, smart PSS, but they continue to primarily concentrate on establishing value propositions and ignore the question of what sort of operational data can be gathered and used to deliver the PSS solution. Therefore, manufacturing companies willing to expand their portfolio with new advanced services nowadays still face multiple challenges. To address this gap, this study proposes the Service Engineering Methodology for the engineering of smart PSS (SEEM-Smart), which takes into account the trade-off between customer satisfaction and internal efficiency with a focus on data gathering and information flow. The methodology is then applied in a real-world setting. The case study shows the application of the SEEM-Smart for engineering a new data-driven service offering enabled by a cloud-based platform supporting the service provision.

Leveraging behavioural economics in smart nudge design through data-driven prospect-theoretic modelling and context-aware intelligent reasoning: application to smart tip nudging

Behavioural economics and nudge theory have attracted much attention for engineering design in a broader context of sociotechnical systems, which provides new perspectives for engineering design when systems have interactions with human. This paper deals with service system design with a particular application to smart tip nudging. The conventional tip nudging approach that uses a set of default tip options lacks context-awareness and sometimes suggests inappropriate tip options. To address this problem, and to also increase tip revenues potentially, this paper proposes a smart tip nudging mechanism based on prospect theoretic modelling of customer tipping behaviours. The model proposes to use joint prospect values of both customers and service providers, which mimics the trade-off that customers make between their own economic gains and losses and the service provided by service providers. Meanwhile, this study provides a data-driven approach to parameter estimation of the prospect theory model, and it enables tip nudging to be context-aware for tip option adjustment by using intelligent reasoning techniques. One field experiment is conducted to validate the proposed system.

Analysis and Design of Standard Knowledge Service System based on Deep Learning

The development of information technology has changed the mode of communication of social information, and this change has put forward new requirements on the contents, methods and even objects of information science research. Knowledge service in the information service process can extract knowledge and information content from various explicit and implicit knowledge resources according to people’s needs, build knowledge networks, and provide knowledge content or solutions for users’ problems. Hence, it is very important to investigate how to analyze and design the advanced standard knowledge service system based on deep learning. To this end, we firstly introduce the typical deep learning networks of convolutional neural network (CNN) for the knowledge service system, and then employ the CNN to implement the knowledge classification based on deep learning. Finally, some simulation results on the knowledge service system are presented to validate the proposed studies in this paper.

Factors Influencing the Sustainability of Stroke Rehabilitation Services in Community: An Analysis Based on Kano Model

A patient’s enthusiasm will affect their recovery during stroke rehabilitation training. Since rehabilitation training is a long process, patients are usually cared for at home, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, professional supervision in the community is often lacking, resulting in low patient participation and initiative as well as the low sustainability of rehabilitation services. At present, many researchers are trying to optimize the process of community rehabilitation services to improve patient compliance. The majority of them, however, have failed to fully consider the psychological needs of the patients. Our aim was to find the key factors affecting patients’ enthusiasm to participate in rehabilitation training. We also wanted to provide an optimal scheme for enhancing the sustainability of community rehabilitation services. Based on patient-centered research, we applied the Kano model and the customer satisfaction coefficient to the study and established a framework for improving the community rehabilitation experience. We observed that patients must first understand basic rehabilitation information and effective rehabilitation methods. Additionally, we found that some factors related to incentive and pleasure could meet the psychological needs of patients. Furthermore, as a result of this research, we applied the framework in practice and refined the design of a rehabilitation-training service system. This work may have significance for the design of sustainable community rehabilitation services. The purpose of this paper is to indicate the direction of rehabilitation services so that patients can take the initiative in rehabilitation.

Online Information Service Model at the Distance Learning Program Unit of Open University

This study aims to produce a UT student service system design at the Distance Learning Unit (UPBJJ) by applying Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This research is a research and development using the method developed by Borg and Gall. In the first year, field studies, data analysis, and design development will be carried out. In the second year, application development and field trials were carried out. The results of the study found that the majority of respondents had access. Most respondents had no difficulty accessing THE services, TMK, online tutorials and web tutorials. The limitation of this research is that some of the available information does not match the respondent's needs and is difficult to reach. There is no problem with UPBJJ's internal management. The recommendations given are to adjust the organizational structure of the Distance Learning Unit (UPBJJ) and revise information about THE services, TMK, online tutorials, and web tutorials so that they are easily accessible and the contents can be used as guidelines for students in accessing Open University Services (UT). This research can be developed by focusing on public trust in distance learning.

Artificial Intelligence Inspired Computer-Aided Design of Library Service System

Computer-Aided Design and Applications is an international journal on the applications of CAD and CAM. It publishes papers in the general domain of CAD plus in emerging fields like bio-CAD, nano-CAD, soft-CAD, garment-CAD, PLM, PDM, CAD data mining, CAD and the internet, CAD education, genetic algorithms and CAD engines. The journal is aimed at all developers and users of CAD technology to ptovide CAD solutions for various stages of design and manufacturing. The journal publishes all about Computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided technologies.

Modeling and solving an economies‐of‐scale service system design problem

AbstractThis paper studies the design of a service system in the presence of economies of scale (EoS). The goal is to decide on the number, location, service capacities of facilities, and the allocation of customers to the opened facilities to minimize the total cost of the system. The total cost includes the opening and serving costs of facilities as well as customers' transportation and waiting costs. To reflect the EoS in the modeling, a general opening cost function is assumed for each service facility with the characteristic of being concave and nondecreasing in its service capacity. A Lagrangian relaxation algorithm is developed for solving the problem in its general form. The algorithm decomposes the relaxed model into homogeneous subproblems where each one can be optimally solved in polynomial time with no need for an optimization solver. Furthermore, the optimal service capacity of each open facility is determined as a closed‐form function. Our computational experiment shows that the developed algorithm is both efficient and effective in solving the proposed problem.

Multi-criteria evaluation of smart product-service design concept under hesitant fuzzy linguistic environment: A novel cloud envelopment analysis approach

Design concept evaluation is an essential but challenging task in smart product service system (SPSS) design. It is critical to select the design concept with better smart experience to ensure the success of SPSS design. Meanwhile, SPSS design concept evaluation is an expert knowledge-based decision process with scant data and a short time window under a hesitant, ambiguous, and subjective environment, which would lead to low decision-making efficiency and inaccurate evaluation results. Hence, this paper proposes a novel cloud envelopment analysis method to evaluate SPSS design concept with respect to smart experience criteria. The proposed method integrates hesitant fuzzy linguistic terms (HFLTs), cloud model and data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to accurately evaluate SPSS design concepts with handling the hesitancy, fuzziness and randomness in qualitative and subjective information. A hybrid model of normal cloud and trapezium cloud is used to quantify hybrid-length HFLT variables to avoid decision information loss and distortion. A novel cloud non-linear programming model is constructed to extend the classical DEA into cloud environment. Finally, a case study and some comparison analyses illustrate the effectiveness and advantages of proposed method.

Robust design of service systems with immobile servers under demand uncertainty

The service system design problem aims to select the location and capacity of service facilities, and the assignment of customers to them in order to minimize the setup, access, and waiting time costs. We address the case when there is uncertainty about the demand for service, considering a service system that can be modeled as an independent network of M/M/1 queues. Robust optimization, with both budget and ball uncertainty sets, is used when the demand rate is unknown, but the arrival pattern can still be reasonably approximated as a Poisson process. Furthermore, we use distributionally robust optimization with a Wasserstein ambiguity set to address the case when the demand distribution is estimated from a limited sample. We are able to reformulate both the robust and distributionally robust problems as mixed-integer second-order cone programs that can be solved directly on commercial solvers. Extensive numerical experiments on benchmark test instances are conducted to compare the proposed approaches and to investigate the effect of problem size and parameters.

Robust design of service systems with immobile servers, general arrival and service patterns, and demand uncertainty

This paper addresses the problem of robustly designing a service system consisting of immobile servers, each modelled as a G/G/1 queuing system, when the arrival rates are not known with certainty. The problem involves locating service centers, determining their capacities and assigning customers to them to minimize the total cost, which includes the setup, access and waiting costs. Besides the nominal problem, two robust problems with budget and ball uncertainty sets are considered. A piecewise-linear approximation is applied to handle the nonlinear waiting cost, which enables all the problems to be tightly approximated as mixed-integer quadratic programs. We also propose a Lagrangian approach that is capable of finding high-quality solutions and strong bounds for instances of practical sizes. Numerical experiments were conducted to validate the proposed models and solution methods and to study the effect of the problem parameters, the uncertainty set size and the objective function approximations on the optimal solution.