Book : Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering, and Management (2003)

Summary

From the publisher:

No matter what field you are working in or studying, Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering, and Management offers you a comprehensive understanding of systems ideas and methods to help you achieve unmatched success with your challenging projects. This unique resource helps you add a systems-scientific grounding to systems engineering enterprises, showing you how to solve intractable problems, design systems to accommodate complex environments, and manage both creative and operational systems. You learn how to conceive, design and manage a systems engineering process for optimal results.

The book is filled with examples and case studies from a wide range of areas, from integrated transport systems, security systems, and defense procurement, to missile defense architectures, famine relief, and managing markets. This innovative reference introduces a generic systems lifecycle theory that helps you understand how systems form, persist and decay, and presents a 5-layer classification for systems engineering. You discover how to use a generic reference model that allows systems of all types to be addressed within a common framework. Moreover, the book reveals how architecture is used to create system emergent properties, capabilities and behaviors.

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Book : Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modelling for a Complex World (2000)

Summary

From the publisher:

Accelerating economic, technological, social, and environmental change challenge managers and policy makers to learn at increasing rates, while at the same time the complexity of the systems in which we live is growing.  Many of the problems we now face arise as unanticipated side effects of our own past actions.  All too often the policies we implement to solve important problems fail, make the problem worse, or create new problems.

Effective decision making and learning in a world of growing dynamic complexity requires us to become systems thinkers to expand the boundaries of our mental models and develop tools to understand how the structure of complex systems creates their behavior.

This book introduces you to system dynamics modeling for the analysis of policy and strategy, with a focus on business and public policy applications.  System dynamics is a perspective and set of conceptual tools that enable us to understand the structure and dynamics of complex systems.  System dynamics is also a rigorous modeling method that enables us to build formal computer simulations of complex systems and use them to design more effective policies and organizations.  Together, these tools allow us to create management flight simulators–microworlds where space and time can be compressed and slowed so we can experience the long-term side effects of decisions, speed learning, develop our understanding of complex systems, and design structures and strategies for greater success.

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Book : Industrial Dynamics (1992)

Summary

How do you design corporate structures and policies that are compatible with the growth objectives of your organization? This text addresses this crucial question and explains how managers’ actions shape the dynamic characteristics of a broad range of organizations. A reprint of the original text, Industrial Dynamics also contains numerous two-color graphs to help illustrate the concepts.

Here is the book that started the study of system dynamics! This classic work is for anyone in management, whether a student or seasoned professional. Forrester looks at a company as a dynamic system of interacting elements, gives a methodology on how to model them, and shows through simulation how the company will be affected by changes. The book covers industrial systems, managerial uses of industrial dynamics, models, systems of equations, flow diagrams, policies and decisions, production-distribution systems, and much more! If you’re interested in ithink, this book is an essential for your library. If you use Optima !iThink, this book will give you good advice on modeling your corporation.

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Book : Introduction to Systems Engineering (2000)

Summary

From the publisher:

Systems engineering (SE), or the engineering of large-scale systems, is key to achieving reliable, efficient, cost-effective products and services in diverse fields, including communication and network systems, software engineering, information systems, manufacturing, command and control, and defense systems acquisition and procurement.

This book offers a unique introduction to the world of systems engineering, focusing on analysis and problem-solving techniques that can be applied throughout the life cycle of product systems and service systems. While the authors provide a framework for the functional levels involved in systems engineering processes and system management, the bulk of the discussion is devoted to the practical application of formulation, analysis, and interpretation methods.

Through the use of real-world examples and useful graphs, readers will learn to:

• Choose the most appropriate methods and tools for a given project
• Apply issue formulation methods to assure that the right problem has been identified
• Work with formal analysis methods to assure that the problem is solved correctly
• Apply issue interpretation methods to insure that decisions reflect human values and technological realities, and thereby make interpretation work for them in the decision-making process
• Develop an appreciation for the engineering and troubleshooting of large systems

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Book : Managerial Applications of System Dynamics (1992)

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Book : Principles of Systems (1990)

Summary

This key text on system dynamics shows by example how structure determines behavior. This book is ideal not just for managers but for anyone interested in the dynamics of urban, ecological, and other systems. It covers feedback dynamics, models and simulation, equations and computation, flow diagrams, information links, integration, and more.

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Book : Seeing the Forest for the Trees: A Manager’s Guide to Applying Systems (2002)

Summary

From the publisher:

Systems thinking can help you tame the complexity of real world problems by providing a structured way of balancing a broad, overall view with the selection of the right level of detail, truly allowing you to see the forest for the trees.

Only by taking a broad view can we avoid the twin dangers of a silo mentality - in which a fix ‘here’ simply shifts the problem to ‘there’ - and organisational myopia - in which a fix ‘now’ gives rise to a much bigger problem to fix ‘then’.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees will give you all the tools and techniques you need, with many practical examples as diverse as managing a busy back office, negotiating an outsourcing deal and formulating business strategy.

Dennis Sherwood was for twelve years a consulting partner with Coopers & Lybrand and was subsequently an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs in London, a partner in Bossard Consultants, and Vice President of SRI Consulting. Educated at the universities of Cambridge, Yale and California, and a Sloan Fellow, with Distinction, of the London Business School, he is now the Managing Director of Organica Consulting which specialised in building competitive advantage through innovation whose clients include Thames Water, Nestle, National Grid, Pearson TV, The Defence Evaluation & Research Agency, Wedgewood, and Yorkshire Electricity. He is a is well-known on the conference circuit and is the author of five previous books including Smart Things to Know About Innovation and Unlock Your Mind.

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Book : Systems Thinking and Modelling: Understanding Change and Complexity (2007)

Summary

Systems Thinking, System Dynamics offers readers a comprehensive introduction to the growing field of systems thinking and dynamic modelling and its applications. The book provides a self-contained and unique blend of qualitative and quantitative tools, step-by-step methodology, numerous examples and mini-cases, as well as extensive real-life case studies. The content mix and presentation style make the otherwise technical tools of systems thinking and system dynamics accessible to a wide range of people.

This book is intended as a text for students in diverse disciplines including business and management, as well as the social, environmental, health and applied sciences. It also has particular relevance for professionals from all backgrounds interested in understanding the dynamic behaviour of complex systems, change management, complex decision making, group problem solving and organisational learning.

Systems thinking and system dynamics provide a scientific paradigm, a set of tools and computer technology which can help explain the forces and dynamics that underlie change and complexity in business, political, social, economic and environmental systems.

Using systems thinking and system dynamics makes it possible to:

• examine and foresee the consequences of policy and strategic decisions
• implement fundamental solutions to chronic problems
• avoid mistakenly interpreting symptoms as causes
• test assumptions, hypotheses and scenarios
• boost staff morale and improve productivity
• improve the stability and performance of supply chains
• find long-term sustainable solutions and avoid ‘fire-fighting’ behaviour.

The world grows more and more interconnected every day, and yet our institutions of commerce, education, health care, and government, by and large, remain firmly wedded to the reductionistic worldview of the Industrial Age. While more and more leaders in institutions of all sorts realise the importance of systems thinking, few have progressed far in practical application, often daunted by what seems like a steep technical learning curve. This is unfortunate, because it leads to either complete neglect or relegating the tools to technical experts, and fails the urgent need for re-thinking critical issues that must engage us all.

If you believe as I do that enhanced systems intelligence is the mandate for living together in our shrinking world, you will be delighted by Kambiz Maani’s and Bob Cavana’s new book, which takes a big step toward clarifying the underlying philosophy and demystifying the system dynamics method that has long been the core of our work.

Peter M. Senge, Society for Organizational Learning, MIT -Boston

New to this Edition

The slight change in the title from Systems Thinking and Modelling – Understanding Change and Complexity to Systems Thinking, System Dynamics – Managing Change and Complexity reflects two things:

• (a) the field ‘System Dynamics’ has been brought directly into the title to reflect the flow in ideas and concepts from systems thinking to system dynamics; and
• (b) the shift from understanding to managing conveys a shift of emphasis towards practice and a broader vision of not only understanding the dynamics of change and complexity, but also to provide tools and support to manage change and complexity.

Two new cases studies related to complex global and business issues and challenges, such as the bird flu pandemics and sustainable fishing practices, have been included.

An update and modernising of one case based on the dynamics of a hypothetical beer distribution system to reflect the rapidly growing field of supply chain management and modelling. Further background on the history and development of systems thinking and system dynamics.

Enhancements to the problem structuring phase of the five-phase systems thinking and modelling methodology based on system dynamics outlined in the book.

Additional technical material to assist readers to better understand the dynamic modelling process.

Further improvements to applications of systems thinking in organisations and an additional learning laboratory, the Brand Management Microworld, in Chapter 6, to aid in managerial learning of systemic and dynamic behaviour of complex systems undergoing change in uncertain environments.

Supplements

This revised edition includes additional material on theory as well as several new cases.  The book comes with a CD-ROM that includes the simulation models presented in the book as well as the installation package for a save-disabled version of the iThink software and the installation program for Vensim PLE (Personal Learning Edition).

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