Support of Describing Service Delivery Processes in Consideration of Service Function Models on Service CAD System

Abstract

The authors have been developing a service CAD system called Service Explorer in the context of service engineering research. This system uses a function modeling technique in product design and a process modeling technique for service delivery in the marketing field. However, concrete supports for inter-relating the two different models have not yet been developed. In this study, we propose a method for supporting the description of service delivery processes by using the Workflow Patterns, which consist of many patterns such as synchronization and conditional branches. Designers need to choose an appropriate pattern among predefined patterns in deploying a service function for service delivery processes. However, choosing an appropriate pattern may be difficult for designers because doing so greatly depends on both knowledge of process modeling and the detail level of process modeling. Therefore, we structure patterns with the ISM (Interpretive Structural Modeling) method based on associations among them so that designers can easily specify the proper patterns on the Service CAD system.