A framework for building behavioral models of technical and economic systems

Efforts towards a circular economy, increased possibilities of sensor technology and monitoring, and the developments in smart, connected products and systems have all contributed to the shift from selling products towards selling service-based offerings. Product-service systems are one example of servicebased offerings, combining physical products or systems to service-based earnings logic. Many traditional companies might benefit from exploring the possibilities of service-based offerings, but the tools for modeling, simulating and analyzing service-based offerings are somewhat lacking. There are numerous existing methods for modeling products on one hand, or business and economic models on the other, but fewer combining the two. This article presents a modeling framework for describing, analyzing and simulating offerings consisting of interdependent technical systems and business processes, based on a an extension of previous work on the Dimensional Analysis Conceptual Modeling (DACM) framework. The goal of the framework is to allow modeling combinations of technical systems and business processes, resulting in flows of revenue between the stakeholders over a period of time. Further, the framework can be used to identify objectives of the stakeholders, and identify contradictions on a variable level, or conflicting objectives on a system level, and to propose solutions for solving the conflicts and contradictions based on general solution principles. In the article, the framework is applied on a case study of designing a reverse vending machine.