Gonzalo Maldonado-Guzman

Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes

Luis Rocha-Lona

Vikas Kumar
email: vikas.kumar@uwe.ac.uk

Service Innovation and Performance in Mexican Service SMEs

Keywords: Innovation, Mexico, service industries, service innovation, SMEs

This empirical research investigates the influence of service innovation on the performance of service SMEs, especially within the context of a country with an emerging economy as it is the case of Mexico. Data were collected through a survey instrument designed and distributed among service SMEs in the Aguascalientes state of Mexico to test a hypothesis formulated from the literature review conducted. The instrument was validated using Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Cronbach's alpha test and the Composite Reliability Index to ensure its reliability. The hypothesis was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) using an as input 308 valid responses obtained from the survey. In general, the results obtained show that service innovation has a positive and significant effect on the performance of service SMEs. Specific research related to service innovation in service SMEs is limited. This paper therefore fills this research gap by expanding the limited body of knowledge in this field.

Introduction

The concept of innovation has been recognized for decades in the literature of business and management sciences as one of the essential resources to achieve higher competitive advantages, not only in manufacturing enterprises but also in service companies [START_REF] Löfsten | Product innovation processes and the trade-off between product innovation performance and business performance[END_REF]. Therefore, innovation in service enterprises has had an important growth and dynamism in the scholarly literature since the end of the previous and the beginning of this century. However, it is important to highlight that a high percentage of the empirical and theoretical research which has been published in the scholarly literature has been mostly focused on transnational and large enterprises; with only a limited number of investigations focusing on small and medium-sized service enterprises (SMSEs) [START_REF] Mcdermott | Service innovation and performance in SMEs[END_REF].

Consequently, innovation in service enterprises has become, in the current literature, as one of the most relevant topics to improve in order to achieve a high level of business growth since innovation in services has focused on the creation of more and better competitive advantages [START_REF] Den Hertog | Capabilities for managing service innovation: towards a conceptual framework[END_REF]. Innovation in services has also been analyzed from a perspective of a predecessor of internal and external business innovation and the existing relation with firm performance that enterprises have achieved [START_REF] Mcdermott | Service innovation and performance in SMEs[END_REF]. For that reason, de Brentani [START_REF] De Brentani | Innovative versus incremental new business services: Different keys for achieving success[END_REF] concluded that companies that carry out modifications or improvements in their services generally have more benefits as well as higher performance which allow them to increase their innovation activities.

In this regard, innovation in processes is considered in the analysis and discussion of services innovation not only as an essential element that shows a strong organizational structure but also as a sequential process [START_REF] De Brentani | Innovative versus incremental new business services: Different keys for achieving success[END_REF][START_REF] Song | A staged service innovation model[END_REF] or a circular unstructured process in order to obtain a higher level of services innovation [START_REF] Stevens | Managing the new service development process: Towards a systematic model[END_REF]. This sequential process can produce better results as well as a significant increase in the performance of service enterprises [START_REF] Von Koskull | Discovering the unfolding of service innovations[END_REF].

Similarly, it is possible to observe the development and implementation of processes innovation of new services in the literature, where the details are generally specified as well as the interactive activities, the negotiation and decision making which are present not only in the services innovation but also in firm performance [START_REF] Woodside | Bridging the chasm between survey and case study research: Research methods for achieving generalization, accuracy, and complexity[END_REF]. Thus, there is theoretical and empirical evidence in the literature of business and management sciences that innovation in service enterprises is much more dynamic and has evolved at a faster pace that innovation in manufacturing enterprises [START_REF] Lyons | Innovation in services: Corporate culture and investment banking[END_REF].

However, relatively few publications have analyzed service innovation in SMEs, so it is necessary to increase the theoretical and empirical evidence of innovation activities within the context of service SMEs [START_REF] Perks | Co-creation in radical service innovation: A systematic analysis of microlevel processes[END_REF]. According to von Koskull and Strandvik [START_REF] Von Koskull | Discovering the unfolding of service innovations[END_REF], it is necessary to analyze and discuss what is really happening in service innovation and processes innovation in service SMEs. Therefore, the main contribution of this research is the analysis and discussion of the existing relation between services innovation and performance of service SMEs in a country with an emerging economy as it is the case of Mexico, and as it suggested by Perks et al. [START_REF] Perks | Co-creation in radical service innovation: A systematic analysis of microlevel processes[END_REF] and Tuominen and Toivonen [START_REF] Tuominen | Studying innovation and change activities in KIBS through the lens of innovative behavior[END_REF].

Literature Review

There is a variety of definitions regarding the concept of services, but if the reader considers the definition coined by Sampson and Froehle [START_REF] Sampson | Foundations and implications of a proposed unified service theory[END_REF] then it is possible to establish that services can be defined as a clear combination of co-produced resources and processed based on the provision of personal services. Similarly, this definition of services is based on the same processes that require the services which define accurately the importance of final clients and consumers in the processes of services creation [START_REF] Sampson | Foundations and implications of a proposed unified service theory[END_REF].

Similarly, the services sector is usually one of the biggest economic sectors in both developed and developing countries. That is why service innovation is one of the essential elements that allow a higher level of growth and firm performance [START_REF] Agarwal | Multi-dimensional nature of service innovation: Operationalization of the elevated service offerings construct in collaborative service organizations[END_REF]. Moreover, in the literature it is possible to observe an important increase in theoretical and empirical investigations regarding services innovation in the last decade, which indicates that several research papers from the area of innovation are focusing more in the services rather than in the manufacturing sector [START_REF] Goldstein | The service concept: The missing link in service design research[END_REF][START_REF] Menor | New service development: Areas for exploitation and exploration[END_REF][START_REF] Jaw | The determinants of new service development: Service characteristics, market orientation, and actualizing innovation effort[END_REF]. This shows the importance that services innovation has in the current literature.

In this regard, the context of the concept of services is changing with the creation of the concept of new services or services innovation. These usually refer to the creation of completely different services that entirely satisfy the needs of the clients segments that have a lot of interest in getting intensive services in new knowledge [START_REF] Leiponen | Organization of knowledge and innovation: The case of Finnish business services[END_REF]. As a result, service innovation researches are usually associated to the creation of new knowledge into enterprises and with the increase of competition of companies [START_REF] Gupta | Knowledge flows within multinational corporations[END_REF], as well as the growth of the development of new products [START_REF] Goes | Interorganizational links and innovation: The case of hospital services[END_REF] and the ability to innovate in the service enterprises [START_REF] Lee | The impact of network and environmental factors on service innovativeness[END_REF].

The existing relationship between services innovation and firm performance has been analyzed and discussed marginally in the literature of innovation when compared to the innovation of manufactured products. This is because services do not have a physical component, it is complicated that consumers obtain immediate benefits after their purchase and it is difficult that they distinguish the components of services innovation [START_REF] Mcdermott | Service innovation and performance in SMEs[END_REF]. Therefore, Voss et al. [START_REF] Voss | Measurement of innovation and design performance in services[END_REF] established that service innovation probably takes more time to create positive effects in performance of the services sector when compared to the innovation of manufactured products in enterprises from the manufacturing industry.

Consequently, services are frequently perceived as basic by clients and consumers but the improvement, change or innovation in services is not as tangible as the innovation of manufactured products [START_REF] Mcdermott | Service innovation and performance in SMEs[END_REF], even when innovation is usually much easier to implement in the services sector than in manufacturing enterprises, but at the same time it is also easier to be copied by the main competitors in service enterprises [START_REF] Voss | Measurement of innovation and design performance in services[END_REF]. This situation can be the main reason as to why service enterprises have a lower number of innovation projects, especially regarding radical innovation, than manufacturing enterprises. As a result, it will be necessary to emphasize more services innovation as it also produces different economic and financial benefits, just like their counterpart from the manufacturing sector [START_REF] Voss | Measurement of innovation and design performance in services[END_REF].

Thus, it is not surprising that in the literature of business and management sciences it is suggested that innovation in manufacturing SMEs produces similar benefits to the ones of service SMEs, except for the amount of innovations introduced to the market [START_REF] Prajogo | The relationship between innovation and business performancea comparative study between manufacturing and service firms in Australia[END_REF]. Therefore, the literature considers innovation as one of the business strategies that allow the significant increase of a number of competitive advantages as well as the level of performance in service SMEs [START_REF] Mcdermott | Service innovation and performance in SMEs[END_REF]. As a result, both researchers and scholars have an area of opportunity to carry out empirical and theoretical investigations that focus on services innovation and the effects on firm performance, and in this way take advantage of the modifications and opportunities provided by this important sector [START_REF] Menor | New service development: Areas for exploitation and exploration[END_REF].

Similarly, forthcoming theoretical and empirical investigations about services innovation will have to consider the difference between the diverse types or categories of services, the analyses made and their effects on the performance or organization [START_REF] Menor | New service development: Areas for exploitation and exploration[END_REF][START_REF] Johnson | A critical evaluation of the new service development process: Integrating service innovation and service design[END_REF]. Upon this idea, Menor et al. [START_REF] Menor | New service development: Areas for exploitation and exploration[END_REF] concluded that there is a gap in the literature about understanding the operationalization of the background of service innovation and its effects on firm performance. Moreover, it is not only necessary to differentiate the types of services in the literature but also consider the existing effects of the relationship between service innovation and the level of performance that enterprises have in the services sector [START_REF] Mcdermott | Service innovation and performance in SMEs[END_REF].

Within this perspective, the categorization of services usually reflects the effects that discontinuous (radical) innovation and continuous (incremental) innovation have on service innovation [START_REF] De Brentani | Innovative versus incremental new business services: Different keys for achieving success[END_REF], since the radical services innovation is completely different from the incremental services innovation [START_REF] Mcdermott | Service innovation and performance in SMEs[END_REF]. Thus, Oke [START_REF] Oke | Innovation types and innovation management practices in service companies[END_REF] considered that most enterprises of the service sector focus more on incremental innovation, which is commonly associated to firm performance. Similarly, Lubatkin et al. [START_REF] Lubatkin | Role of top management team behavioral integration ambidexterity and performance in small-to medium-sized firms: The pivotal[END_REF] discussed that services innovation is more incremental in SMEs since this provides them with a higher level of firm performance. Accordingly, Oke et al. [START_REF] Oke | Innovation types and performance in growing UK SMEs[END_REF] also considered that service innovation is mostly incremental because it produces a higher level of firm performance. Therefore, at this point it is possible to establish the following research hypothesis: H1: The higher the level of service innovation, the higher level of firm performance

Methodology

The business directory of the 'Sistema de Información Empresarial Mexicano' 2016 (Mexican Business Information System) for the Aguascalientes State was used to determine the size of the service enterprises that were considered for this empirical research. This directory had a register of 1,334 service enterprises between 5 and 250 employees by January 2016. Therefore, the sample contained 308 enterprises with a reliability level of 95% and a maximum level of error of ±5%. A questionnaire was designed, validated and distributed to the 308 selected enterprises by means of a simple random sampling method from January to April, 2016. The questionnaire collected data regarding the characteristics of service enterprises, the innovation activities in the previous two years as well as the firms' performance.

In order to measure service innovation, managers were asked to indicate if the enterprise had carried out innovation activities in the previous two years. In order to measure the importance of innovations, managers were asked to evaluate the innovation in services, processes and management systems with seven items by means of a five-point Likert scale (from 1 = Not Important to 5 = Very Important as their limits). The scale was adapted from those developed by Frishammar and Hörte [START_REF] Frishammar | Managing external information in manufacturing firms: The impact of innovation performance[END_REF] and Madrid-Guijarro et al. [START_REF] Madrid-Guijarro | Barriers to innovation among Spanish manufacturing SMEs[END_REF]. Regarding the measurement of firm performance, it was measured with eight traditional indicators constructed from the perception of the managers of service SMEs about their competitive position regarding market share, profitability and productivity [29]. These eight questions were also measured by means of a fivepoint Likert scale (from 1 = Not Important to 5 = Very Important) as their limits.

Similarly, in order to evaluate the reliability and validity of the two scales of this empirical investigation, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) of second order was carried out by using the method of maximum likelihood with the software EQS 6.2. Moreover, the reliability was evaluated by means of Cronbach's alpha and the Composite Reliability Index (CRI) proposed by Bagozzi and Yi [START_REF] Bagozzi | On the evaluation of structural equation models[END_REF]. The results obtained are presented in Table 1 and they indicate that the model had a good adjustment of data (S-BX 2 = 205.576; df = 80; p = 0.000; NFI = 0.924; NNFI = 0.941; CFI = 0.953; y RMSEA = 0.061). The values of Cronbach's alpha and the CRI were higher than 0.7, which provided evidence of reliability and it justified the internal reliability of the scales of the theoretical model [START_REF] Hair | Multivariate Data Analysis with Readings[END_REF].

Additionally, the suggestions made by Chou et al. [START_REF] Chou | Scaled test statistics and robust standard errors for non-normal data in covariance structure analysis[END_REF] were observed for the corrections of statistics when it is assumed that the normalcy of the scales is present. Robust statistics were used in order to provide better evidence of the statistical adjustments of the scales [START_REF] Hair | Multivariate Data Analysis with Readings[END_REF]. As evidence of convergent validity, the CFA results of second order indicated that all the items of the related factors were significant (p < 0.01). The size of all the standardized factorial loads were above 0.60 [START_REF] Bagozzi | On the evaluation of structural equation models[END_REF] and the Extracted Variance Index (EVI) of each pair of constructs from the theoretical model had a value above 0.5 as suggested by Fornell and Larcker [START_REF] Fornell | Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error[END_REF]. This indicated that the theoretical model had a good adjustment of data.

Table 1. Internal consistency and convergent validity of the theoretical model

Regarding evidence of the discriminant validity, the measurement was provided by two tests that can be seen in Table 2. Firstly, with an interval of 95% of reliability, none of the individual latent elements of the matrix of correlation had a value of 1.0 [START_REF] Anderson | Structural equation modeling in practice: a review and recommended twostep approach[END_REF]. Secondly, the EVI between each pair of constructs was higher than their corresponding variance [START_REF] Fornell | Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error[END_REF]. Based on these criteria, it was concluded that the different measurements used in this research provided enough evidence of reliability and discriminant validity.

Table 2. Discriminant validity of the measurement of the theoretical model 4 Results

A structural equation model (SEM) of second order was used in order to answer the hypothesis stated in this research by using the software EQS 6.2 [START_REF] Byrne | Structural Equation Modeling with EQS, Basic Concepts, Applications, and Programming[END_REF]. Similarly, the nomological validity of the theoretical model was analyzed through the Chi-square test. It was mostly based on the comparison of the results obtained from the theoretical model and the measurement model whose results were statistically not significant between the Chi-square of both models. This provided an explanation of the relationships observed between the constructs of the latent variables of the two models [START_REF] Anderson | Structural equation modeling in practice: a review and recommended twostep approach[END_REF]. The results obtained by using the SEM of second order are presented in Table 3.

Table 3. SEM results of the theoretical model

Regarding the research hypothesis stated in this investigation H1, shown in Table 3, it can be seen that the results obtained (β = 0.435 p < 0.01) indicated service innovation has significant positive results on the performance of service SMEs. In other words, service innovation activities (innovation in services, processes and management systems of services sector) that are adopted and implemented in service SMEs are good indicators to achieve a better level of firm performance. This would support service SMEs in achieving the necessary economic and financial resources to keep on with innovation activities.

Discussion and Conclusions

Considering the results obtained in this empirical research, it is possible to conclude on two main aspects. Firstly, it is possible to measure services innovation activities through three activities: services innovation, processes of services innovation and management systems of services innovation. Therefore, it is important to consider that if executives of service SMEs want to adopt and implement innovation as a business strategy, and as part of their everyday activities, then they will have to develop activities related not only to service innovation but they will also have to pay special attention to innovation in processes that are needed for the production of services, as well as to implement systems that improve their management.

Secondly, since service innovation is regarded as a strategy that creates several benefits for enterprises, especially SMEs, then it is possible to conclude that enterprises that adopt and implement innovation activities as part of their routine will have more possibilities of significantly improving their level of firm performance. This will provide them with the basic economic and financial resources needed to keep on developing service innovation, and even SMEs will have the necessary conditions to implement radical innovation in their services by creating new services that do not currently exist in the market. Thus, they will be able to dethrone their main competitors as well as to significantly increase their firm performance.

Similarly, these results have several implications for both managers and service enterprises themselves. One of these implications is that, in general, the innovation activities carried out by service SMEs, not only in Mexico but in other countries, are focused only on the modifications or improvements of existing services in the organization (incremental innovation); that is why it is not possible to establish that service SMEs are innovative. Conversely, it cannot be said that service SMEs that develop new services (radical innovation) are the only innovative enterprises. Innovation does not refer exclusively to create services but also to change or improve the existing ones. Therefore, any SME that produces a modification, an improvement or creates a new service can be considered as an innovative enterprise.

Likewise, it is also possible to state that, considering the results obtained in this research, service SMEs that make modifications or improvements to their services, processes and management services, have higher possibilities of adopting and implementing the necessary activities to achieve a higher level of innovation and, consequently, significantly increase their level of firm performance. However, it is important to consider that in Mexico, just like other countries in Latin America, around 70% of service SMEs have an organizational structure based on their families, they include their own members in executive positions and they are managed by the families. As a result, decisions taken are controlled by the family that owns the enterprise and workers and employees are considered as part of the family.

In this regard, managers of service SMEs have to change the organizational culture of their companies in order to adapt it to the innovation activities as it is necessary for their employees and workers to suggest solution alternatives, not only to address the main problems faced by the organization but also to improve services. Therefore, the organization needs to create an environment that promotes team working, the participation of all employees in the design of innovation activities, and the freedom to express their ideas to produce changes or improvements in the creation of services, processes and management services. As a result, enterprises will be in a better position to increase incremental service innovation and the level of the firm's performance without further complications.

Additionally, managers of service SMEs will need to find a way to increase the innovation activities of their enterprises because this will determine their success. In a similar trend, managers will also have to find methods to have a better control on innovation activities. This will need the use of different training programs to improve innovation activities from government offices, business boards and associations. This will determine the level of a firm's performance as well as its growth, development and survival.

Finally, the results of this investigation provide enough theoretical and empirical evidence that proves that service innovation, processes and management services have different benefits for enterprises of the services sector. Therefore, managers will have to create in the organizations an environment with a positive and pro-positive attitude in the innovation of services and avoid as much as possible a "resistance to change" attitude from workers and employees and provide the necessary modifications demanded by the market, clients and final consumers. This will align the organizational culture of innovation with the general strategies of service SMEs.

By contrast, this empirical research has several limitations that are important to consider. The first one is related to the sample as the enterprises that were selected had between 5 and 250 workers. Further investigations will need to take into account enterprises with less than five workers as they represent more than half of SMEs in Mexico. A second limitation is that the questionnaire was distributed, exclusively, to service SMEs from the Aguascalientes State region, but a high concentration of this type of enterprises in located in the country's capital city. Further investigations can replicate this research in other states, or even countries, to expand and compare the results obtained from this study.

A third limitation is linked to the scales used for the measurement of service innovation and firm performance. In this case, only seven items were used to measure the information of services and eight items to measure firm performance. Future investigations can develop and use other scales to verify the results obtained. A fourth limitation is that only qualitative variables were considered for the measurement of barriers for innovation and innovation itself. Further researches will need to consider the use of quantitative variables such as investment in research & development in order to verify if there are significant differences in the results obtained.

Finally, a fifth limitation is that the questionnaire was distributed only to managers of service SMEs. This created the assumption that they had a lot of knowledge about innovation activities and firm performance, so further investigations will need to apply the same questionnaire to employees, clients and suppliers of enterprises to verify the results obtained.


Mélanie Despeisse
email: melanie.despeisse@chalmers.se

Peter Lunt
email: peter.lunt@airbus.com

Teaching Energy Efficiency in Manufacturing Using Gamification: a case study

Keywords: Eco-efficiency, Energy efficiency, Manufacturing, Games, Teaching and learning, Education

Sustainability is a critical topic and needs to be systematically integrated in engineering education and professional training courses in manufacturing organisations. Eco-efficiency is a key sustainability concept but it can be challenging to teach as it is highly practical and thus ill-fitted for purely classroom environments. Games and simulations provide a good mechanism for effective and engaging teaching on such practical topics. This paper describes a case study of four game sessions ran in a manufacturing company. This empirical research shows how the card game 'One thousand kWh' enabled participants to actively learn about energy efficiency in manufacturing operations, and to explore sustainable manufacturing practices and barriers to implementation.

Introduction

Complex issues, such as globalization, industrial digitalization and sustainability, need to be more systematically integrated in engineering and management education. Broadening the set of learning experiences and teaching methods in engineering curricula is crucial to provide engineering students with the skills and knowledge required to respond to new industry needs [START_REF] Case | Emerging methodologies in engineering education research[END_REF]. Typical production engineering courses largely consist of lectures in which concepts and theories are conveyed. Short projects and practical exercises give students the opportunity to put this knowledge into practice and attain deeper learning by engaging more actively with the course material. Ideally, students should also carry out industry projects to experience the challenges and complex phenomena occurring in real-world manufacturing environments. Focusing on sustainability, the skills required to address today's industry needs are envisioning, critical thinking and reflection, systemic thinking, collaboration and decision-making in uncertain and paradoxical conditions [START_REF] Tilbury | Engaging People in Sustainability[END_REF][START_REF] Scherer | Managing Legitimacy in Complex and Heterogeneous Environments: Sustainable Development in a Globalised World[END_REF][START_REF] Smith | Toward a Theory of Paradox: a Dynamic Equilibrium Model of Organizing[END_REF][START_REF] Beech | Paradox as invitation to act in problematic change situations[END_REF]. To address this challenge, a toolkit (Figure 1) was developed to engage students (in higher education) and trainees (in professional courses) to learn more actively about eco-efficiency and sustainable manufacturing [START_REF] Despeisse | Improving Factory Resource and Energy Efficiency: the FREE Toolkit[END_REF]. The toolkit aims to simplify and gamify sustainability concepts.

Fig. 1. The five elements of the eco-efficiency toolkit

This eco-efficiency toolkit is composed of five activities (or "elements"): (1) see waste, (2) find solutions, (3) set targets, (4) assess yourself, and (5) create good habits [START_REF] Despeisse | Improving Factory Resource and Energy Efficiency: the FREE Toolkit[END_REF]. One notable tool in this eco-efficiency toolkit is the card game 'One thousand kWh'. It addresses various aspects of the toolkit with practical, industry-relevant learning outcomes. The game focuses in good practices for energy efficiency in manufacturing operations along with the typical barriers of implementation. In this paper, we describe how the game is designed, the mechanics of its game play, and the results of an experiment composed of four pilot sessions conducted with Airbus employees. Finally, we discuss the pros and cons of using games for education and provide some next steps for the sustainability games.

Game Design and Development

The card game was developed incrementally based on a trial-and-error approach. Three prototypes, each being iteratively improved based on player feedback, were produced and tested before the final product was professional printed and packaged. The rules are largely based on a French card game, Mille Bornes, developed in the 50s. It was selected for its simplicity and popularity which is proof that the format and concept work well for a broad audience. The game is set to be easy to learn and playable within 30 minutes. Besides keeping the rules as simple and intuitive as possible, it is critical to provide sufficient context to make the learning experience as quick, effortless (and fun) as possible. This is important to address a typical drawback of using games as an educational tool: players can easily get carried away and forget about the learning experience.

The first two prototypes were tested multiple times in informal meetings with coworkers at the University of Cambridge during breaks and after work. This provided a more robust content for the third prototype which was then presented to industrial partners. The prototype format was good enough for the purpose but lacked the intuitive design to make the rules and mechanics quickly understood. The final product was largely improved by using bright colours, symbols and large fonts to clarify the cards categories and their relationship. A sample of the final card game is shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Samples from the One thousand kWh card game

The card game consists of four categories of cards described in the next subsections.

1) Improvement cards (plain background).

This category consists of a collection of sustainable manufacturing practices focused on energy efficiency. These practices were mainly sourced from the IAC database [START_REF]Industrial Assessment Centers Database[END_REF]. The practices selected were:  the most recommended, capturing the most often overlooked practices;  the most implemented, considered as the easiest practice to implement;  the shortest payback time, representing the most economical practices;  the largest savings, often associated with the most expensive practices as they require high capital investment in new equipment/machinery.

Due to the space constraint and the need for the improvements to be quickly read and understood while playing, some of the practices were rephrased or simplified based on formulation found in other sources [START_REF]Resource Efficient & Cleaner Production (RECP)[END_REF][9][10]. This aspect was crucial as there is little time to reflect on the meaning of the practice in a game environment.

The practices were then sorted and grouped into seven types of improvement and associated with a generic value to reflect its average impact on energy savings: The first three barriers capture some of the findings from previous research on barriers to industrial energy efficiency [START_REF] Lunt | Barriers to industrial energy efficiency[END_REF] and the last two aim to reflect the potential negative consequences on product quality and environment, health and safety aspects when good practices are not systematically implemented.

p N E W , M O R E E F F IC IE N T T E C H N O L O G Y

3) Remedy cards (dotted background).

As mentioned in the previous section, there are five types of remedies. Each remedy addresses two barriers [name in brackets]. This is to ensure that there are sufficient solutions to barriers so players would not get stuck for too long and could go through more Improvement cards.

Results

Four pilot sessions were conduct with Airbus employees to test the game and get feedback on the usability and usefulness of the game. The four different focus groups were selected to capture a broad range of opinions on the game effectiveness and ideas on how this could be deployed at Airbus. This section describes each focus groups, the sessions' setting and the feedback provided by participants.

3.1

The four focus groups Trade Union Safety Representatives (TUSR). The first pilot involved five senior safety representatives (four playing, one observing). TUSR work closely with the shop floor and were able to provide practical feedback on various elements of the game. The pilot session took place in their office which is on the shop floor, thus in the actual manufacturing environment simulated in the game. Being so close to the real-world environment provided the ideal conditions to get the "blue collar" insight into the game.

The session started with a very high level of engagement and competition between the representativeseven to the extent that they joked about putting a financial stake on the table. The focus was very much on winning with most attention given to the practices with the highest savings, and often the practices with lower savings being overlooked or trivialised. The language used on the cards was sometimes considered too technical, requiring explanation by the facilitators, which reinforced the focus on the value on the card rather than the practice itself.

The feedback from the representatives was that the game itself seemed complex to begin with but that it was easy to pick up. They thought this could be a problem with introducing it more widely to the shop floor workers. The game lasted 30 minutes which would mean it would be difficult to introduce either during normal working time or during breaks, which are short.

However they proposed a targeted approach, perhaps to other representatives first who could then cascade it to others or via a specific training session. The practices on the cards were seen as broadly relevant and the representatives were pleased to see examples of practices that they had already implemented or that they could implement in their production area. They also recognised the barriers and were pleased with the ratio of barriers to practices which made the game more free-flowing.

Facility Management. The composition of the group for the second pilot session was quite varied and included people working on a variety of infrastructure projects and with some, but limited experience, of energy efficiency from a buildings perspective (as opposed to a manufacturing perspective as primarily addressed in the game). Two of the participants in this group already played the game before in a previous meeting in preparation for this pilot session. This function in the company is the ideal customer for the game so the feedback from this session is the most important. Despite some initial scepticism, the session was carried out successfully with good results in terms of engagement and quality of discussions after the game.

As the function responsible for energy consumption, Facility Management staff played the game with some ideas in mind about how they would like to deploy it. During the game, they considered how it could be played during the energy awareness campaigns. Although the game was shorter than the first pilot session (20 minutes), they had concerns that this would still be too long to engage with employees.

They also made the same observation as the TUSR that it was difficult to begin with but very enjoyable once the game was underway. Some of the people who played had no experience of energy efficiency and found the language difficult, but the other players with experience were able to explain.

Also as above, it was noted that it was easier to focus on the value rather than the practice. One member of staff suggested that a way of overcoming this could be to use the cards in a different way as a "higher-or-lower" style game, where the practice on the card is read out and players have to determine if the savings are higher or lower. This could also be suitable for a small number of players (perhaps only two) and a larger number of observers, which would work well with the person-at-a-stand approach for the awareness campaigns.

Manufacturing Engineering. This third pilot session was conducted with engineers who had good technical knowledge and some grasp of energy efficiency. It also was the biggest session with six players and took 45 minutes to complete. The group experience was ranging from engineering apprentices to people who have worked for Airbus for many years. Their primary interest laid in how they can build energy efficiency into their specifications for new equipment/machines rather than continuous improvement activities.

The game was picked up quickly but the level of engagement seemed lower than the other sessions. The main feedback from the engineers was that they wanted it to be highly relevant to their work and would appreciate it more if the practices were based on specific projects with specific savings figures. This would also help with understanding the practices moreand how they could be applied. One engineer suggested that a good understanding of the practices in the deck could be a useful aid for writing a specification for new manufacturing equipment and that the deck could be used a reference source.

Environment Health & Safety (EHS).

The final session was with the EHS team. The shop floor workers invited to this session did not join as there was no interest in the session due to skepticism and limited willingness to engage. The EHS shop floor staff are mainly responsible for health and safety, with environment added as an extra responsibility but often overlooked. However, the "white collar" EHS staff were also invited and were more engaged, one of whom had played the game before. This session was the shortest at only 15 minutes in lengthbut even this was considered too long for using with shop floor workers.

Most of the comments from this team were related to how it could be deployed and the constraints associated with delivering it as a piece of training, either standalone or as part of another course. The team also commented on what the expected outcomes could be; gaining an awareness of good practices, barriers and their remedies is good, but this should lead to actions which allow the practices to be implemented.

Summary of Feedback on Format and Content

The four pilot sessions ran for a reasonably short time with the game time itself ranging from 15 to 45 minutes. There were only few issues with learning the rules and game mechanics. Most players learnt quickly and helped other players, reducing the need for external facilitation. This ensures that the game can be further deployed as experienced players can easily teach others and scale up the use of the game. The practices on the Improvement cards, despite being considered too technical at times, was mostly relevant for the companies. A few practices were not relevant due to specificities of the production facilities at Airbus. For instance, the site does not use steam and thus all practices connected to energy savings in steam networks were not applicable. Some suggestions were made to customize the game to Airbus and include actual examples of past projects. The format in which this could be achieved was shortly discussed as including actual value of the energy savings and a full description of the practice on the cards would make it less user-friendly. Instead a reference or code could be added on the card to link to external resources and provide more complete information which could be consulted outside the game.

The Barrier and Remedy cards were also considered as relevant and sometimes added a comical element to the game. Some players invented stories explaining why their opponents would face a specific barrier or how they can solve this challenge. It is hypothesized that this type of emotional engagement with the content can enrich the learning experience and make it more memorable. Therefore, it has been suggested in subsequent games to engage with the card content through storytelling.

Finally, the Immunity cards may be considered as the most technical ones (terminology from Lean and Toyota Production System). However there was little discussion on their meaning and applicability at Airbus. This could be addressed by highlighting the importance of these cards as they are very powerful, like the "joker" or wild card in a regular playing card game. A short dictionary of the terminology used in the eco-efficiency card game could be included in the rulebook in order to give the opportunity for players to further explore Lean principles and concepts after the game.

Conclusions

Overall, the format worked well for all focus groups. Participants quickly understood the purpose of the session (learn about eco-efficiency and get examples of practices) and the objective of the game (score 1,000 kWh of energy savings). Despite some initial difficulties to learn the rules and game mechanics, all players succeeded in playing without additional guidance, typically after one full round.

The main intended learning outcomes are to learn about: (1) sustainable manufacturing practices; (2) typical barriers to improvement; (3) remedies to these barriers; (4) systematic ways to overcome barriers based on Lean principles. The team dynamic and storytelling are instrumental to enrich the learning experience through deeper discussions on specific practices, barriers, remedies and immunities. It shows potential for the game to be a platform for knowledge exchange. Additional objectives were to increase the acceptance of serious games as educational tools; to promote experiential learning on practical topics; to enable team building and engagement with the topic of sustainability; and to encourage the recognition that eco-efficiency is feasible and actionable.

Further work is currently underway to test the card game in university lectures. So far, the card game was used for team building during the induction week of MPhil students in Industrial Systems, Manufacture and Management, and in modules on Industrial Sustainability, Sustainable Manufacturing and Energy Technologies with underand postgraduate engineering students. Early findings reveal polarized reactions amongst students with a majority of the responses strongly positive trend on gaming as a mean to learn about eco-efficiency.

1 .

 1 Switch off lights (25 kWh); 2. Good housekeeping (25 kWh); 3. Process controls and production planning (25 kWh); 4. Challenge set points (50 kWh); 5. New, more efficient technology (75 kWh); 6. Switch off equipment (100 kWh); 7. System-wide improvement (200 kWh). Play er can 't imp rov e unt il [Cr isis tea m me etin g] or [Le arn ing ] L AC K OF CO MM U NI CA T IO N hi gh inv es tm en t co st ] an d [L ac k of kn ow led ge ] B U D G E T (f or pi lo t pr oj ec t) p ti m u m si ze an d c ap ac it y e q u ip m e n t C H A L L E N G E S E T P O IN T er can onl y use Go od hou sek eep ing unt il [Le arn ing] or [Bu dge t] L AC K OF KN OW L E DG E  P la ye r ca n 't im p ro ve u n ti l [I n te rv e n ti o n ] o r [C ri si s te am m e e ti n g] F A C T O R Y C L O S U R E (f o r n o n -c o m p li a n c e )  So lu tio n to [L ac k of kn ow led ge ] an d [L ac k of co m m un ica tio n] L E A R N IN G (f ro m co lle ag ue s) e st m o to rs at m ax c ap ac it y an d o th e r m o to rs as b ac k u

2 )

 2 Op tim ise pla nt pow er fac tor wit h dem and con tro ller S YS T E M -W ID E IM P RO V E M E NT 20 0 20 0 Barrier cards (striped background). There are five types of barriers. Each barrier can be removed by two types of remedy [name in brackets], with improvement exceptions [italic name in brackets] for the first two barriers.

1 . 4 )

 14 Repair (and replace): Solution to [Leak, accident or product defect] and [Too high investment cost]; 2. Budget (for pilot project): Solution to [Too high investment cost] and [Lack of knowledge]; 3. Learning (from colleagues): Solution to [Lack of knowledge] and [Lack of communication]; 4. Crisis team meeting: Solution to [Lack of communication] and [Factory closure]; 5. Intervention (to bring perf. up to min. standard): Solution to [Factory closure] and [Leak, accident or product defect]. Immunity cards (crosshatched background). There are five unique Immunity cards in total, each based on a principle from the Lean manufacturing and addressing a specific barrier [name in brackets]: 1. Hansei & sustainability vision: Sustainability as a mindset and core business value, making the player immune to [Too high investment cost]; 2. Genshi genbutsu & routine training: Go and see problems on-site to experience them first-hand and develop better solutions, making the player immune to [Lack of knowledge]; 3. Yokoten & collaborative teams: Outstanding communication within the company to enable broad dissemination of new good practices, making the player immune to [Lack of communication]; 4. Kaizen & energy champion: Performance beyond legal compliance, making the player immune to [Factory closure]; 5. Muda walks & preventive maintenance team: Outstanding shop floor layout and maintenance, making the player immune to [Leak, accident or product defect].

  1. Too high investment cost: Player can still play [Switch off lights] improvements as they are relatively high budget, until [Budget] or [Repair] remedy is played; 2. Lack of knowledge: Player can still play [Good housekeeping] improvements as they are basic improvements that do not require advanced knowledge, until [Learning] or [Budget] remedy is played; 3. Lack of communication: Player cannot play any improvement until [Crisis team meeting] or [Learning] remedy is played; 4. Factory closure (for non-compliance): Player cannot play any improvement until [Intervention] or [Crisis team meeting] remedy is played; 5. Leak, accident or product defect: Player can't cannot play any improvement until [Repair] or [Intervention] remedy is played.


Marco Blokhuis
email: m.p.blokhuis@rug.nl

Nick Szirbik
email: n.b.szirbik@rug.nl

Using a Serious Game Development Approach in the Learning Experience of System Engineering Design

Keywords: Serious games, Functional Architectures, Learning experiment

ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

At the University of Groningen, graduates, alumni, industry partners, and accreditation organizations of the study Industrial Engineering and Management in the Industrial Engineering and Management master (IEM), acknowledge positively the experience acquired via integrative courses present in the curriculum. The System Engineering course is one of them. This course applies both problem-based and project-centric learning. Within this course students are working in a close-knit group to develop a complex system design. The group, named a triad, and it is formed by three teams of three students and a student who acts as coordinator and integrator. Each triad models a different system, these being complex socio-technical systems, like for example a nation-wide bike theft prevention system, a large scale electric scooter sharing system, locally connected wind farms and consumers, an internationally integrated hydropower storage system, and other large-scale multi-stakeholder systems. During the last four years (2014)(2015)(2016)(2017) emphasis has been put on the use of serious games in the course, as both a learning experience enabler and knowledge acquisition enhancer. The novel approach presented in this paper encompasses not only the development of the triad's system but also the playing of a serious game that mimics the growth of the system.

The advantages of playing sessions of a specific serious game (GasBoard, developed by university researchers together with industry partners) to support the motivation and learning experience of students during the Systems Engineering course work have been reported previously [START_REF] Szirbik | Enhancing an Integrative Course in Industrial Engineering and Management via Realistic Socio-technical Problems and Serious Game Development[END_REF]. To enhance further the students' experience in their system design, the development of a serious game that is specifically related to their triad's system design project was experimented with. The basic feature of this serious game is that the game has to reflect to some extent the system to be designed.

In this paper, we are describing an experiment we run through the System Engineering course this year, to test if the development of a serious board game connected to the system to be designed can support positively the learning of systems design. A secondary goal was to find out how the game development can influence and improve the system's architecture.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. First the context in which the experiment is taking place is described. Second the research question is operationalized. Third the experimental setting is described. As the data related to the experiment has been just gathered and it is under analysis and interpretation, only some preliminary results are presented. Finally, conclusions are then drawn.

2

The system engineering design course as context for research and the main question of this research

The system engineering design course is one of the oldest integrative course in the IEM master program at the University of Groningen. It started in 2004. The project that the students have to undertake is quite equivalent (albeit much shorter in time and smaller in scope) to the pre-inception phase in a real system development process [START_REF] Buede | The engineering design of systems: models and methods[END_REF]. The main output of the coursework is a design of a complex socio-technical system. This consists of a context-placed operational architecture of the system, comprising a functional architecture and a (mostly) generic physical architecture. There are two deliverables for each triad. The first is the Originating Requirements Document (ORD), which is a text augmented with functional and physical diagrams, and a System Requirements Document (SRD), which is a digital database for system design (developed in CORE, a computer aided systems engineering tool, by Vitech Corp.). These two deliverables have to be consistent with each other; the ORD is intended for system's stakeholders use and the SRD for the developers use. The system modelling in both deliverables is relying mostly on IDEF0 (CORE supports this graphical language) functional models -using hierarchical and interaction diagrams to depict the functional architecture. For the quality and detail of this functional architecture the students get more than half of their grade.

Each triad of students has to develop a system design of a complex socio-technical system. To prevent mimicking, no two triads have the same system to design, and from one year to the other, the systems are not repeated, to prevent inter-generational plagiarism. The choice for the socio-technical system to be designed is let to the members of the triad (i.e. they are playing the role of stakeholder and designer in the same time). To allow concurrent design, each team in a triad is responsible to develop a part of the architecture -roughly a third. These parts are delimited by the students themselves. In order to insure coherence between parts and organize the cooperation and the communication between the teams, a separate, tenth student in the triad is playing the role of system integrator. The coursework takes 10 weeks to complete.

During this period, the individual teams and the triads have to deliver 3 intermediary ORDs and SRDs on which they receive feedback from tutors. The timing of these deliverables is illustrated in figure 1. It also enhanced the communication and alignment in the integrative process, heightening the motivation to finish with an exciting result. Moreover, it challenged to explore and find new design ideas [START_REF] Szirbik | Enhancing an Integrative Course in Industrial Engineering and Management via Realistic Socio-technical Problems and Serious Game Development[END_REF]. Despite the observed improvements, the students who played this digital game reported that the game was "too restrictive and impossible to adapt to their own ideas" [START_REF] Velthuizen | Introducing FASD: A Functional Architecture for Serious game development[END_REF]. They suggested a non-digital version in the form of a board game and argued that "it would have been more interesting and useful to have a flexible board game that was easy to change according to the changes they made in their own design" [START_REF] Velthuizen | Introducing FASD: A Functional Architecture for Serious game development[END_REF]. Letting students to develop their own non-digital board game during their system design development has both material and educational advantages.

Complete project document including game

Organize system integration and develop game

Non-game teams Game teams

Measure progress

Prepare for presentation Preliminary work

needed for the development and implementation of a digital game. In fact, it is possible to begin with a clean slate, developing the board game from scratch. The educational advantage is that it offers the flexibility required to try new ideas for the game, as it is easy to implement, change and adapt during a project development. These are features that are particularly important when exploring solutions for the blockage encountered in the preliminary development of socio-technical system of 'chicken-and-egg' development conundrum type [START_REF] Szirbik | Interactive simulation for discovering investment scenarios in energy systems[END_REF]Ittoo et al., 2013a;Ittoo et al., 2013b). This type of system is characteristically marred by the investment blockage phenomenon. Typically, there are stakeholders who are interested to develop a technology-heavy infrastructure for specific clients, but the development funding would be available only if the usage of the infrastructure would enable the users to pay for it [START_REF] Wene | Energy-economy analysis: linking the macroeconomic and systems engineering approaches[END_REF]. This type of systems has been often encountered in multiple past and recent infrastructural projects such as renewable energy networks [START_REF] Veeningen | Design science research issues in developing and applying serious games in the uncertain world of long term energy investments[END_REF] and liquefied natural gas infrastructure [START_REF] Thunnissen | Sustainable Fuels for the Transport and Maritime Sector: A Blueprint of the LNG Distribution Network[END_REF] and are often chosen by students. The triads that have developed these kind of systems were the ones encouraged to undertake the supplementary task to develop a board game mimicking the growth of the system to be designed.

We expected that developing a board game and playing it can have multiple effects and yield various research results. First, the learning experience of the students is expected to be better than without the game development -we name this the learning effect.

Second, the generic framework to develop games can be continuously validated, and if necessary, refined -we name this the knowledge effect. Third, the final system design in the project can be affected by the game development activities that take place in the same project -we name this the design effect. Though we pursue all three lines of investigation in our research, we focus here in this paper only on the learning effect. Therefore, this paper specifically describes the experimental setting that has been developed to answer the question: How does the game development by students during the coursework support/influence/hinder their learning of systems engineering design.

The Experimental Setting

In order to answer the research question, the study is focusing on the experience of the students who were part of teams designing systems having a chicken-and-egg characteristics. Seventeen out of the 27 teams of the class of 2017 had to design such a system. Six out of these 17 teams have agreed before the first deliverable date to develop a board game -and three of these games were specifically linked to an entire triad's system. Six other teams (actually two whole triads) out of the initial set of 17 attempted later to develop a game to support their final presentation. To keep the workload fair with the other teams, the initial six game teams did not have to finish the physical architecture part. However, this is not really a change, because the game itself contains in the end most of the physical elements of the system. The playing off the game is intended to mimic the growth of the system and it is supposed to help the stakeholders with the discovery of bootstrapping scenarios for the system that is designed by each team. These six teams were provided with a generic framework (architecture and guidelines) for developing chicken-and-egg problem serious games and a manual of how to apply it [START_REF] Veeningen | Design science research issues in developing and applying serious games in the uncertain world of long term energy investments[END_REF]. Both the game teams and the nongame teams were pro-actively supported by the instructors during tutorials and received feedback after each deliverable.

We investigated the merits and value of using a game development complementary to the system design that the students have to do for their team project. We focused on the learning effect, that is, the development of the game and its continuous refining and testing will affect in turn the depth of understanding of the students about how systems are designed. In the end, our hypothesis is that the skills and knowledge necessary to design a complex multi-stakeholder system design can be improved by complementing the design process with a serious game development that explores bootstrapping scenarios for its gradual development.

The experiment takes into account the learning results of all the 17 teams that chose a system design that have the "chicken and egg" characteristic. The hypothesis of this research is that these game development and play activities have some positive effects on how the students grasp the basics of systems engineering design. Data is gathered via the two last team's deliverables to assess the design effect of game on the output, and via general course feedback questionnaires that were handed out to all students of System Engineering to evaluate the effect of developing a game on the . The questionnaires inquire about the skills the students think they have learned, what they liked, what they found difficult, their proposal for course content change, participation in post-mortem workshops, continuing to be involved in System Engineering and any other comments about the course. The questionnaire did not contain any specific question about the experience with the game. For the purpose of this paper, we only looked at the skills the students reported to have learnt during the course, and the most liked and disliked aspects in the coursework. For each of the section, they were allowed to give multiple answers. In the next section, the answers provided by the students involved in teams designing chicken-and-egg type of system is presented and analyzed.

Some Preliminary results

The original goal was to assess the effect of the game development on the quality/completeness of the final functional architecture. The analysis of difference between the improved Functional Architecture and the final one (the difference between the next to the last and the last deliverable) had proved to be inconclusive, as the student teams did not found the time to include any modification.

Out of the 52 students working on a chicken-and-egg type of system, 30 completed the course feedback questionnaires, which contained a number of 11 open questions -3 of which are reported here. Fourteen of students were those out of 18 of the students who were part of teams committed to develop games, and 16 of students were those out of 34 the students who did choose not to develop a game. From these completed questionnaires, the information presented in tables 1, 2, and 3 was compiled. Table 1 presents the answers collected that relate to the question about the skills the students openly reported to have learnt (without any suggestion for the response). Table 2 is about the aspects of the course that the students liked the most, and table 3 about the one they liked the least (again, without any suggestion for the response in the questionnaire). The skills reported by the students in the course feedback questionnaires are: group work, functional thinking, holistic view, abstract thinking, creativity, switching from functional architecture (FA) to physical architecture (PA) (cf: Table 1). The skills the most often mentioned are group work (17), functional thinking ( 16) and learning to acquire a holistic view (7). The acquisition of the two first skills, group working and functional thinking, are in large majority acknowledged by the members of teams that did not develop a game. However, holistic views skills are mentioned only by the students that were member of teams that originally decided to develop a game. The most liked aspect about the course are the aspects related to the game development (8), the group work (6), aspects related to course form (3), creativity (4), functional thinking (2), creation of a realistic, tangible system (1), holistic approach (2), developing the system (2), the freedom for own project (1) and playing the game (1) (cf: Table 2). The game development was mentioned eight times by eight different students. One of these eight students was a student of a late game development triad.

Seven students mentioned the group work as their favorite aspect of the course; all of them were in teams that did not originally choose to develop a game. If we consider the students who chose originally to develop a game, the development of the game is chosen most often as most liked aspect, followed by aspects related to the course form.

It is interesting to notice that none of them mention group work as most liked aspect of the course. For the students not originally choosing to develop a game, group work is the most popular aspect, followed by creativity and functional thinking. The most difficult aspects about the course as reported by the students are functional thinking (7), game development (6), high workload (4), working on a large system (3), group work (4), functional architecture development (3), defining the initial system (1), managing the deliverables (1) and gathering real-world data to make the system feasible and real (1) (cf: Table 3). Depending if the students were making a game or not, the aspects found the most difficult differed from answer to answer. For the students making a game, the development of the game came first followed by functional thinking. For the students not developing a game, functional thinking came first as the most difficult aspect, with group work coming second.

Conclusions

The students from the groups initially choosing to develop a game reported most often the ability to adopt a holistic view as most valuable skill, followed by functional thinking. In addition, even if developing the game has been considered as the most difficult aspect they also liked this aspect the most. Group work is only mentioned marginally by these students in each of the three questions. The students who did not choose initially to develop a game found the group working skills the most valuable skills learned during the course. It is also the most liked aspect and also considered the most difficult aspect of the course. Functional thinking was also considered to be one of the most difficult aspects of the course. From these observations we can conclude that developing a game indicates a perceived increase of the ability to adopt a holistic view as the most valuable, and it is noticeable that this skill is not mentioned at all by the students not initially choosing to develop a game.

These results pertain only to a quantitative interpretation of a small part of the data collected during the experiment. However, the games were filmed, hundreds of notes were taken, post-mortem focus-groups were organized, and the game themselves can be analyzed and compared. We still have to sift through this trove of qualitative data and find the right interpretations. For example, one triad remarked: "with the creation of the game, we had to work completely together, everybody's ideas were discussed and considered, we agreed, disagreed, we argued, and improved together our game. More collaboration than ever during the course came up with the game". Many more interesting remarks of this kind wait to be properly analyzed and interpreted.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. The timeline and the three deliverables related to the experiment

  Considering the material advantage, it saves the resources

		Organize system		Complete project
	integration and develop	document including
	physical architecture	physical architecture
	Week 20	21	22	23	24	25
	May 19	June 2 Improved FA	June 16

Table 1 : Most important learned skills for different types of groups

 1

	Skill	Original game	Not originally game
	Group work	4	13
	Functional thinking	5	11
	Holistic view	6	0
	Abstract thinking	3	1
	Creativity	1	2
	Switching from FA to PA 0	2

Table 2 : Most liked aspect about the course

 2

	Most liked aspect	Original game	Not originally game
	Game development	7	1
	Group work	0	6
	Related to course form	3	0
	Creativity	2	2
	Functional thinking	0	2
	Creation of a realistic,	1	0
	tangible system
	Holistic approach	1	1
	Developing system	1	1
	Freedom for own project	0	1
	Playing the game	1	0

Table 3 : Most difficult aspects about the course

 3

	Most difficult aspect	Original game	Not originally game
	Functional thinking	4	3
	Game development	6	0
	High workload	2	2
	Working on large system	1	2
	Group work	1	3
	Functional architecture	2	1
	Defining the initial system	0	1
	Managing deliverables	0	1
	Gathering real-world data	1	0
	to make system feasible and
	real


Marco Aurelio Butzke

Anete Alberton

Jeancarlo Visentainer

Solimar Garcia
email: solimargarcia10@gmail.com.

Irenilza De
email: irenilza@gmail.com.

Alencar Nääs

Alencar Nääs³

Business Games Based on Simulation and Decision-Making in Logistics Processes

Keywords: Business Games, Active Methodologies, Logistics Processes

des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

Business games can improve student learning and prepare them for the labor market to create environmental experiences to offer them an opportunity to learn how to do it [START_REF] Brown | Using a Business Simulation to Teach Applied Skills-The Benefits and the Challenges of Using Student Teams from Multiple Countries[END_REF][START_REF] Garris | motivation, and learning: A research and practice model[END_REF]. Business games aim to collaborate in the teaching-learning process when the proposed environment is risk-free, offers realism and allows responses with immediate feedback.

The relationships between supply, plant and distribution processes by activities of storage, transport, movement and distribution of logistics products can be considered complex and involve strategic, tactical and operational levels. Besides, the complexity of these relations can raise results in the organizational performance. In this way, decisions made in the logistic processes must be integrated and systematized to reduce costs or to make tradeoffs [START_REF] Amaral | Conhecimento e Avaliação dos trade-offs de Custos Logísticos: Um estudo com profissionais brasileiros[END_REF].

According to authors [START_REF] Gonen | On-line training for Improvement of Business Decision[END_REF], some issues can be discussed about the use of business games as an effective teaching methodology to improve decision-making for training in management processes. What the criteria of success with the use of business games and the relationships of business games with other teaching methodologies are the author's questions.

This research paper intends to implement a business game based on simulation, with the incorporation of challenges with goals for the performance indicators and decision model to define the sequence of decisions related to organizational levels. Lastly, the main purpose is to analyze the application of business games as an effective teaching methodology and decision-making in logistics processes in business administration courses.

Decision-making in logistics processes in business games based on simulation

The search for answers to what are the criteria of success with the use of business games and the relations with other subjects in the teaching of business administration have been significant challenges to be overcome [START_REF] Gonen | On-line training for Improvement of Business Decision[END_REF]. To authors [START_REF] Garris | motivation, and learning: A research and practice model[END_REF], the goal is to create an instructional program that incorporates resources and features of the game. The reactions and judgments of the participants are caught during the game, and at the end, it must have the commitment to validate if the learning objectives have been achieved.

The some authors [START_REF] Garris | motivation, and learning: A research and practice model[END_REF] consider the results pointed out by students in business games based on simulation for the learning process: interest, pleasure, involvement, confidence, behavior, feedback and debriefing (Table 1). The authors conclude that a business game based on simulation should be fun, interesting and engaging, and beyond learning, it should be considered as entertainment that builds trust and spontaneous participation of the student. When well designed, a game can facilitate the learning of specific concepts and skills by solving problems with decision-making.

Business games based on simulation have been used in the classroom to support in the teaching and learning process since the 1950s [START_REF] Faria | Developments in business gaming: A review of the past 40 years[END_REF]. The use of business games as a pedagogical support tool to modernize classes and the implementation of information technologies has improved the process of disseminating simultaneous results with immediate feedback.

According to authors [START_REF] Harrington | Sterling, Simulating the Financial Impact of Marketing and Logistics Decisions[END_REF], the use of simulation can contribute to strategic and tactical decisions to improve financial performance. In [START_REF] Doumeingts | Méthode GRAI: méthode de conception des systémes en productique (Thése d'état: Automatique: Université de Bordeaux 1)[END_REF] introduced a scheme that incorporates a production system with the view of a decision model through the GRAI grid that aims to provide a generic description of a production system, focusing on the control of point of view. The control of a production system will be represented from a global perspective, at the decision center level.

Table 1. Determinant factors for learning with business games

Factor Characteristics

Relevance

The business game must be more interesting than the traditional teaching strategies with the possibility of offering a real simulated environment bringing theory to practice.

Pleasure Business games must be fun and enjoyable, combining challenge, learning, and retention of knowledge.

Task involvement

The involvement in the learning process results in a better retention of information and use of knowledge.

Confidence

Games can provide a training environment where users can perform tasks without facing the consequences of a failure in the real world.

Behavior

Committed participants who spend more time on tasks have sustainable behavior and involvement. They work hard, return to the game spontaneously and achieve better levels of concentration.

Feedback

The feedback on the performance that participants are getting in the game is essential to evaluate the progress, motivate, keep them playing, and spend more effort to persist on the proposed task.

Debriefing

The discussion and analysis of events happened during the game can produce corrective actions by verifying mistakes and successes, and it is a significant relation between experiences of game and learning. Note: Adapted from [START_REF] Garris | motivation, and learning: A research and practice model[END_REF].

The Development of the GRAI grid modeling started from a theoretical basis. At the conceptual level, the model is composed of three systems: the physical system, the decision system and the information system (Figure 1).

Fig. 1. The GRAI Model

Source: [START_REF] Doumeingts | Méthode GRAI: méthode de conception des systémes en productique (Thése d'état: Automatique: Université de Bordeaux 1)[END_REF].

In this research, the information system used is the business games based on simulation. Besides, it was used the grid diagram to build the menu of options for students to operationalize their decisions at the strategic, tactical and operational levels.

Business games based on simulation and decision-making in logistics processes

The simulation of the results from the decision-making process to help students in the learning process or the training of professionals for the labor market can occur through the application of business games. Therefore, a system based on a decision model can be used to facilitate the visualization and organization of the decisionmaking process. However, some authors point out that the existing relations, both operational and informational, between the hierarchical levels can raise difficulties in the decision-making process. In this scenario of complexity, decisions must be made in a systematic and integrated way.

The logistics processes of supply, plant, and distribution are logistics costs generators through physical operations of packing, transport, storage and handling between the factories and the values inherent to the chain functioning such as maintaining inventory, information technology, taxation and failures [START_REF] Faria | Gestão de Custos Logísticos[END_REF]. Furthermore, logistics costs tradeoffs are compensatory tradeoffs between costs and the level of service provided to the customer and interfere with the company's economic and financial performance [START_REF] Lambert | Distribution costs: the challenge: The key to managing the physical distribution function is total cost analysis, rather than aphazard stabs at cutting specific costs[END_REF]. Likewise, according to [START_REF] Amaral | Conhecimento e Avaliação dos trade-offs de Custos Logísticos: Um estudo com profissionais brasileiros[END_REF], professionals know that logistics costs tradeoffs do exist, but they do not clearly have the idea that the total cost is determined by them.

Regarding the implementation of the organization for the decision-making process in the ENTERSIM business game (Table 2), the GRAI grid Methodology was used according to the studies developed by [START_REF] Doumeingts | Méthode GRAI: méthode de conception des systémes en productique (Thése d'état: Automatique: Université de Bordeaux 1)[END_REF].

Table 2. Logistic decision proposed for the business game based on simulation

Logistic process Decision Description

Inbound

Selection of suppliers The student can choose three suppliers to buy raw material.

Modal of transport

The student must select a modal (road, rail, air or sea) to carry the raw material.

Lot for acquisition of raw material

The quantities (lots) offered by the selected suppliers and stocks of raw material can be checked.

Plant Plant location

The student must choose the location of the factory plant among the 27 capitals of Brazilian states. The revenue from the chosen capital will be ignored to calculate the indicators.

Manufacturing planning

The student can define the product in each production unit on the business day.

Outbound Freight

The student can choose CIF or FOB for delivery.

Modal transport

The student must select a modal (road, rail, air or sea) to transport the finished goods.

Revenue of orders

The student will define the day of delivery and control the finished goods inventory.

Inventory

Raw material inventory

The student can check raw material inventory.

Finished goods inventory

The student can check finished goods inventory.

Source: the authors (2017).

The values for the indicators were calculated using the values for the costs involved in logistics processes, expenses, stock inventory, and gross revenue. Table 3 shows the performance indicators classified by the logistic process, a key factor, and attribute. The authors [START_REF] Melnyk | Using Simulation to investigate Supply Chain Disruption[END_REF] state that the use of a simulated environment, without risk and losses in decision-making, can contribute to analyzing events and their impacts influence on organizational performance. The scenario chosen for the application of the business game was the simulation of an environment of a textile industry from the point of view of the analysis and the influence of logistics costs based on the processes of supply, plant and distribution. The use of simulation, optimization and decision models in business games serves to assist students in the teaching and learning process for decision-making. The complexity of costs and tradeoffs in logistics processes create performance indicators that will be used as a basis for training new managers.

Methodology

The research was carried out in three steps: structure, application, and analysis of the data to evaluate the relationship between aspects of active teaching methods and student performance in the application of a business game based on simulation at a decision-making scenario in logistics process. The first step, the structure one, was related to the literature review on active learning, business games based on simulation, logistics costs, and decision-making in logistic processes. Besides, with this information, activities for the field research involving the use of business games, the research instruments for the data collection and sampling were designed.

Regarding the second step, the research application, it was subdivided as follows: to enable students participating in the game and register the personal characteristics; to train students for taking part in the game through instruction in order to perform basic operations in the business game; to apply inventories to measure learning styles; to apply the research instrument about the learning facilitating factor; to apply the research instrument for validating the learning environment quality; and to apply the business game based on simulation. Furthermore, the third step was to analyze the gathered data.

The application was carried out at UNIDAVI at 2 undergraduate courses: business administration (with 95 students) and international trade (with 27 students). The application process totalized 122 samples for data analysis.

Moreover, when accessing the business game, the student could access the decisionmaking options in logistics processes such as plant location, manufacturing planning, selection of suppliers, modal transport, a lot of raw material acquisition, freight and revenue of orders. The business game presented the performance indicators in the logistics processes of inbound, plant and outbound classified by cost, efficiency, and responsiveness. The student can verify the impact on performance indicators in each decision made in the logistics processes.

Furthermore, from the collected variables and definition of constructs data were validated. The performance of the student in the business game did not present significant differences in the perception of the learning facilitating factors, excepting for the aspects related to the classroom environment. Regarding the learning environment quality, there was no significant difference between the evaluated factors.

After analyzing the results, it was necessary to investigate some points that presented the best and the worst results in the participants' responses. The points that needed to be investigated were: the learning facilitating, in the dimensions of teaching strategy and reflection in action; and also on the quality of information in the instrument that evaluated the learning environment. Therefore, for this process were selected business administration students with better and worse outcomes at the business game, a total of fifteen students. Considering the invited students, eight accepted to participate in another data collection through individual questions and personal testimonies about the experiment they had participated. About this step, an interview script was designed to gather students' testimony on the issues that presented the most relevance to improving understanding in a subjective way. The script had the following questions: 1 -Would you use a business game again? Was the time for the activity appropriate? 2 -Did the business game contribute to your learning? Did the business game associate theory with practice? 3 -Regarding the instructions provided, do you think they can be improved? 4 -Did the business game provide information to improve your knowledge about a company's operation or problem-solving? 5 -Did the business game help in discussing problems and solving conflicts in the group? 6 -Can the business game improve my knowledge about decision-making?

Data analysis

The quality of the virtual environment for learning in the business game presented a better result in the indicators of satisfaction about the perception of the student on perceived utility. Likewise, the quality of information indicated a significant difference when related to performance. The ease-of-use factor showed below-average performance and the variable about "interacting with business games did not require much intellectual effort" had a discordance index of 14%. This indicator reflects the complexity involved in choosing the scenario for designing the business game based on decision-making in logistics processes.

Considering the variable "to help integrate learning in several areas", it obtained good indicators. Then the variable "helps to know the activities related to the professional practice" was well evaluated in this research and did not obtain good indicators in the previous researches. Additionally, this result may consider that the ENTERSIM business game associates theory to practice regarding students' perceptions about the labor market. The factors evaluated in this study about the learning facilitators presented agreement indexes between 35% and 64% in all variables.

Concerning the students' voluntary testimony, it can be observed that all of them would participate again in activities with business games. However, the time available to perform the activity was divergent among students, with a tendency to affirm that the application time was not enough. "Yes, I would, but the time was not sufficient. As the software is broad and involves some processes it takes time", reported A5. Disagreeing with this statement, A8 reports that "I would play whenever available and the time was enough for me."

There was a strong demonstration of the students about the contribution to the learning process since it connects the theory to the practice. The responses show that everyone agrees, but A6 points out that there were many doubts during the process, and A7 states: "With more time, I could make enjoy it better." Therefore, in the opinion of the students, the business game can help in the decision-making process. However, they emphasized that it just happens with a clear understanding of the operation and routines contained in the activity.

Regarding company's operations and problem-solving, there was agreement and consciousness of some respondents that decisions might influence the indicators more than others: "any details can lead to great impacts" reports A8. Likewise, in the group discussions, A6 mentioned that he preferred to play individually. Except for A2 and A3, the others reported that there were discussions in the group; there is information about disagreement and consensus in the group. Considering the contribution of the game to learning in the decision-making process, all students agreed with the relevance of this methodology. Although, A6 and A7 report that only with the clear understanding of the entire decision-making process the business game contributes to the apprenticeship.

Final remarks

Business games have been used as a teaching strategy in universities for decades. Since the beginning, the discussion about the use this active learning methodology, impacts and contribution in teaching business administration has raised studies that demonstrate the importance of the evolution of business games adapting itself to the innovations of information and communication technologies.

Furthermore, for most students that participated on the voluntary testimony, instructions can be improved. Group discussions and conflict resolution did not obtain defined patterns, and it was observed that each group had its behavior. Although the gathered results highlighted some difficulties and suggestions for improvements: in general, the application of the game contributed to the learning process; and it was also considered a teaching strategy that contributes to the development of reasoning in decision-making, problem-solving, as well it brings theory to practice. The students' statements validate the results presented previously by [START_REF] Garris | motivation, and learning: A research and practice model[END_REF].

In conclusion, the ways in which business games have been used on updated technological platforms have allowed changes on the interaction development as well as about the immediate feedback on decision-making results. Lastly, these aspects motivate students to participate more actively in the learning process and to interact with educational tools. All of this is possible due to the Internet and cloud computing associated to friendly interfaces together with the independence of geographical location and time zones.

Table 3 .

 3 Performance of indicators at the business game

	Logistic process	Key-factor	Attribute	Indicator	Measure
		Factory	Efficiency	Raw material level	%
		Inventory	Efficiency	Raw material efficiency	%
	Inbound		Cost	Inbound cost	% of income
		Transport	Cost	Raw material cost	% of income
			Responsiveness	Delivery time	days
	Plant	Factory	Cost	Rental cost	% of income
			Efficiency	Finished goods level	%
			Cost	Internal cost	% of income
	Outbound	Inventory	Efficiency Cost	Finished goods efficiency Outbound cost	% % of income
		Transport	Responsiveness	Delivery time	days
			Efficiency	Orders	orders
	Source: the authors (2017).

Acknowledgment:

The authors wish to thank CAPES CNPQ, and the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV).