Affiliated Organization

Proceedings of SIGSVC Workshop

Abstract

This paper presents a new, operational view of service activities and service systems in the form of an extension of the resources-for-action (RA) section of an existing service system metamodel. The original metamodel represented the fact that service activities need resources in order to occur and also produce products/services that are resources for subsequent service activities and/or the service system's customers. The new RA section clarifies the different types of resources that are created or used by service activities within service systems.This paper addresses an area of service science that is not well-developed. The literature related to service science tends to treat resources in a general and nonspecific manner that provides relatively little insight about how to identify specific resources that are needed or used in specific service systems. This paper combines ideas from two streams of research, one related to a service system metamodel and the other related to a new tool for systems analysis and design. After summarizing a new extension of the RA section of the service system metamodel, it uses an example related to service activities in a medical clinic to illustrate how the new RA section leads to a tabular documentation, analysis, and design tool. That tool can be used for examining the design or operation of a service system with emphasis on the timely availability of necessary resources.

Volume

12

Issue

32

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