Organisations comprise human and technical systems that typically perform a variety of business, engineering and production roles. Of late, attention is being focused on modelling various aspects of people working within production systems. In the research reported graphical and computer executable models of people have been conceived and used in support of human systems engineering. The paper describes how the modelling approach can underpin the conceptual design and runtime simulation of alternative human system configurations. In this paper, the authors illustrate the application of the modelling approach and the advantages gained from the use of simulation technologies. [Received 10 September 2009; Revised 27 May 2010; Accepted 22 October 2010]