Designing and managing sustainable service systems 

Project purpose

This research aims to systematize knowledge on the design and management of innovative and sustainable service systems by focusing on cases in which service delivery sites solved problems such as operational inefficiencies and labor shortages by strategically setting low service goals, and to propose a new view of service and a new way of thinking about service design and management from the perspective of sustainability, customer satisfaction, and operational simplification. The significance of this research is to systematize the fact that “it is possible to find situations that are not the best but sufficient” as a management science and to achieve “Decent Work and Economic Growth,” one of the goals of the SDGs.

Research subjects and methods

This research analyzes successful cases of strategic reduction of service quality from the perspectives of sustainability, customer satisfaction, and operational simplification. The following activities will be conducted to contribute to the resolution of issues faced by service providers. 

1. To collect and analyze successful cases of strategic service quality reduction to construct a mathematical model that incorporates the perspectives of sustainability, satisfaction, and simplification, and to clarify the characteristics of the model through its mathematical analysis. 

2. To validate the mathematical model and to clarify the psychological processes of service providers and customers by modeling a gaming simulation, implementing a game, and conducting a gaming experiment based on the constructed mathematical model. 

3. To construct a decision support model by modifying the proposed model based on the findings obtained and conducting numerical simulations and agent-based simulation analysis tailored to individual cases. 

4. To systematize these findings, construct a simulation game that can be experienced, and disseminate it to society so that it can be used in training and education.

Thus, this research is characterized by its perspective as a design science as well as a descriptive science, and by its integration of mathematical deductive and experimental research methods in social science through the linkage of mathematical models, gaming simulation, and agent-based simulation methods.