Information visualization can accelerate perception, provide insight and control, and harness this flood of valuable data to gain a competitive advantage in making business decisions. Although such a statement seems to be obvious, there is a lack in the literature of practical evidence of the benefit of information visualization. The main contribution of this paper is to illustrate how, for a major European apparel retailer, the visualization of performance information plays a critical role in improving business decisions and in extracting insights from RFID-based performance measures. In this paper, we identify – based on a literature review – three fundamental managerial functions of information visualization, namely as: a communication medium, a knowledge management means, and a decision-support instrument. Then, we provide – based on real industrial case evidence – how information visualization supports business decision-making. Several examples are provided to evidence the benefit of information visualization through its three identified managerial functions. We find that – depending on the way performance information is shaped, communicated, and made interactive – it not only helps decision-making, but also offers a means of knowledge creation, as well as an appropriate communication channel

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In the last years, a number of companies have undertaken a shift to a service paradigm. Apart from the benefits obtained by the so called "servitization", many companies have also suffered the lack of methodological and systematic tools to deal with the enlargement of their Product-Service Systems (PSS) offering. The few tools nowadays available in the Service Engineering (SE) context have a reduced industrial applicability, and are mainly focused on the satisfaction of customer needs. Starting from this limitation, Pezzotta et al. (2014) defined the SErvice Engineering Methodology (SEEM) that aims at supporting companies during the engineering of a new PSSbalancing the value perceived by the customer and the company sustainability. In particular, this paper aims at investigating and defining how it is possible to properly adopt Discrete Event Simulation (DES) in SEEM for the purpose of assessing the performance of a new or revised PSS offering. Two possibilities have been identified and compared through an industrial case study, and a comparison to select the best one has been conducted. The identified paradigm has been then used in a real context with the aim to better understand the main industrial implications.

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