The 69th Installment
Service engineering education by PBL (Project Based Learning)
by Seiichi Kawata,
Dean, Professor, Master Program of Innovation for Design and Engineering
To teach knowledge of service engineering field and skills, an educational method based the project practicing service design is effective. PBL method for the master program of Innovation for Design and Engineering has started from 2009 and the first theme of the project that I instructed was methodological exploration of service design. I would like to explain the summary of the projects conducted for five years reminiscing about progress of the projects.
The project of methodological exploration of service design was carried out in the year of 2009. The methodology of design was named as PLAN come out from the discussion with the students. Because the design processes were configured by four phases:
- Philosophical design
- Logical approach
- Analysis on service
- Next best policy
The interesting thing as result of the project is that research study was conducted. We referred Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, “Introduction to Service Engineering”, Synthesiology, vol. 1, No. 2, pp 111-122, 2008, and conducted the analysis of impression using SD method by internet research service for 108 peoples regarding 17 kinds of primitive services “Medical services, Care, Assistance, Move, Eating and drinking, Beauty, Accommodation, Education, Information, Consultation, Music, Story, Entertainment, Storage, Transportation, Maintenance, Production” which had been existing in the center of human life before service industries were established. We proposed a hypothesis that services can be explained by 4 factors from the result of factors analysis, omitting details:
- Customer-facing ability
- Certainty
- Comfort
- Sympathetic ability for customers
We designed customer value and service encounter based on these factors.
Also we made a model and conducted a simulation for service evaluation using discrete event simulator “Arena”. Making a customer model is needed for the simulation. In this PBL education, we learned and practiced the basics of making persona. On the premise of simulation experiment, we have been structured mathematical model for measuring customer satisfaction. The proposal on the improvement of university education service was offered in 2009 on the basis of the outcome. The conclusion was that our university is asked to be well equipped.
After that we proposed new service for food and health in 2010, and chose the appropriate theme for post-quake in 2011. In the circumstance of various barriers such as earthquake disaster, the importance of Business Continuity Plan (abbreviated to BCP hereafter) has been indicated. From the thought that developing of Home Continuity Plan called by home equivalent of BCP (abbreviated to HCP hereafter) is important, we proposed HCP service as new service. Through the position of increasing resistance to society using man-to-man network community, we proposed new service, supporting to borrow or to lend goods needed in 2012. Tourism service for foreigners has been proposed with a view to host the Olympics in 2013.
Our project is proceeding with the aim of proposing new service in this year. PBL is a learning method. I hope that students will learn a series of services design methods, creating service scenario, making persona model, service design using SysML and services evaluation using discrete event simulator, and will acquire creativities for proposing new services in the processes of executing projects.