A presentation by Victoria Uren & Christopher Brewster for the Spring Servitization Conference held at Aston University May 20-22 2013

1. Linked data flows in
multi-player games for
servitization
Victoria Uren & Christopher Brewster
Spring Servitization Conference
May 20-22 2013

2. Introduction

3. The Problem – Barriers to Servitization
• Adopting servitization is a major strategic decision
• Profits may go down as well as up (Grönroos & Ojalsalo, 2004)
• Income from new sources
• …but new expenditure too
• Manufacturers may need new skills
• Service staff
• Customer support tasks
• New marketing approaches
• Increased complexity of communication
• Downstream with customers
• Within the company
• Upstream suppliers

4. Serious Games
• Serious Games “entertain, educate & inform”
• Allow experimentation in safe, simulated environments
• “Traditional” military, medical & safety applications
• Increasing use in business training

5. A Multi-player Game

6. Widget Producer GameBase
Make
machine
Sell
machine
Intermediate
Service
machine
Advanced
Guarantee
widget
production

7. Base Level
Customer
Sales
Negotiates price
Factory
Produces WP
Receives WP
Submits
order
Images © 2004–2013 Florida Center for Instructional Technology

8. Base Level Data
• production costs
• number of machines sold
• price for each machine
• production capacity of factory

9. Intermediate Level
Customer
Sales
Negotiates price
Arranges service
contract
Factory
Produces WP
Receives WP
Submits
order
Images © 2004–2013 Florida Center for Instructional Technology
Designer
Service
Fix WP
Report faults
Makes
spares
Uses
spares
Improves
calls out
service
teamInforms of contract
conditions

10. Intermediate Level Data
• production costs
• number of machines
sold
• price for each
machine
• production capacity of
factory
• number of units with
servicing contracts
and their value
• unit average quality
• cost of spare parts
• cost of warehousing
spares
• cost of service
personnel time
• Buyer satisfaction
levels
• cost of design time

11. Advanced Level
Images © 2004–2013 Florida Center for Instructional Technology
Strategic
Planner
Monitors all
data and sets
targets for next
round
Negotiates
guarantee
Lend
substitute
machine

12. Advanced Level Data
• As for Intermediate, plus:
• number of days for which a substitute machine must
be supplied and cost
• number of substitute Widget Producer units held in
stock and cost
• number of units with premium servicing contracts
and their value
• number of substitute units requested
• number of substitute units loaned on time

13. The Problem is Increased Complexity
• As the game progresses – as servitzation is implemented
• More players are involved
• More data is required
• Trade offs become more complex
• Players need to know more about each other’s role
• Should Sales offer the guarantee to a customer who is located far
from the warehouse?
• Is it worth the designer replacing failing component X with a more
expensive one to reduce service call outs?
• How should factory balance the production of new units vs spare
parts to ensure service is maintained & orders fulfilled?
• How many spares and replacement machines need to be stocked?

14. Potential Data Formats

15. Existing Business Data Exchange Standards
• Electronic Data Exchange (EDI)
• Data format for business transaction documents (e.g. invoices)
• Developed initially by Motor industry
• Significant start-up challenges
• Can require complex mapping to incorporate new data
• GS1 bar code standard
• incorporates detail of many features of products

16. Data Opportunities
• Open Data
• data generated by the public
sector made available for
public use, e.g. crime
statistics, health service
data
• Web 3.0 / Semantic web
• innovative technologies for
machine understandable
data on the web
• Open Linked Data
• a powerful merge of both
Image Semantic Web Stack, source Wikipedia

17. Open Linked Data
• RDF/XML standard for sharable data
• Published according to four simple rules (Berners-Lee 2006)
1. Use URIs as names for things
2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names
3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information,
using the standards (RDF, SPARQL)
4. Include links to other URIs, so that they can discover more
things

18. The Linked Data “Cloud”
Image: http://lod-cloud.net/

19. Linked Data State of the Art
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/Linked-Data-Connecting-together-the-BBCs-Online-Content

20. Linked Data in Games
• Supports incorporation of public datasets
• OpenStreetMap – data about location of Buyers and service
depots
• GB Road traffic counts – data about traffic flow per major road
junction per year
• Supports reuse of the game architecture for different scenarios
• MusikBrainz – data about albums, performers etc., for
changing business models in the music industry

21. Linked Data in Supply Chains
• Linked data technologies don’t have to be open web
• Intranet & VPN use web technologies
• Different partners need different kinds of data:
• raw materials, component production, assembly, fitting, repair
and maintenance
• Agile supply chains need to connect new partners to information
networks quickly:
• Mapping for Linked data executed simply using SameAs links
• EDI can be rendered as XML

22. Conclusions

23. Summary
• Serious games open an opportunity to reduce barriers to
servitization uptake by educating business people through
simulated environments
• Servitization barriers include increased complexity of data and
communication channels
• A game scenario was conceived which demonstrated data and
communication complexity issues
• Linked data proposed as a flexible data format both within the
game and in supply chains more widely

24. References
• Grönroos, C., & Ojalsalo, K. (2004). Service Productivity: towards
a conceptualisation of the transformation of inputs into economic
results in services. Journal of Business Research, 57(4), 414–423.
• Berners-Lee, T. (2006). Linked Data - Design Issues. Retrieved
July 23, http://www.w3.org/ DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

25. Thanks for listening – questions?