The aerospace, IT, and construction industries have seen a significant shift over the past few years from "cost-plus" contracts (where "every change is good", and means more revenue), toward "fixed-price" or "ceiling value" contracts (where the cost of every change must be negotiated with the customer or traded off against other work). The disruptive effects of these changes are substantial, but are universally poorly (and under-) estimated. The result has been unexpected cost overruns, lost profits, and disputes. This workshop will combine lecture and group exercise to teach valuable lessons about project disruption dynamics. In the session you will learn how change impacts spread to disrupt a project's performance and learn some mitigations to reduce or avoid the disruptive impacts of changes. For further information please contact Tom Kelly at
tom.kelly@paconsulting.com.
This paper addresses the question of whether there is a conceptual model that can explain operational risk in a wide range of organizations. It utilizes case studies and other research literature to build on the foundation laid by previous modeling research into system failures. The validity of the model is tested by how well it fits the parameters of operational risk failures and successes in case studies representing a diverse range of situations in manufacturing, mining, financial services and government.
The possible diffusion of plant-derived vaccine (PDV) biotechnology in developing countries offers an interesting potential substitute to existing more expensive vaccine technology currently available on the market. This paper is concerned with the potential impact that the introduction of such a technology could have on the cost of immunization, and also, more broadly on the incidence of hepatitis B cases on Indias population overtime. The objective of the paper is to look at the hypothetical issues of a PDV diffusion using a system dynamics (SD) model. Some illustrative results are presented to show the interaction between infection rates, mortality rates, and immunization costs. In spite of promising features, such as much lower production costs, institutional hurdles to a widespread diffusion of the technology still need to be overcome.
This article examines the conceptual framework for the social amplification of a risk issue with an analytic lens of System Dynamics. It will explore the dynamic interaction of general public, mass media, government agencies, and non-profit organizations; or what is called social stations, with regard to the national project of constructing the high-speed railway in Korea which was stopped by a Buddhist nuns 100-day hunger strike for protecting salamander and natural environment. Existing studies show that risk amplification occurs when media sensationalism causes risk perception and public concern to be magnified far beyond levels proportional to the risks estimated in risk assessment science. The case study underlines that social amplification is much accelerated within a highly networked society, or internet environment. Such process can create political over-activism or disruption, social conflict, or policy failure more costly than what the issue is.
As a high school student who really enjoy the world of architecture, I use the Stella software to have a try on explaining the former of the curved roof of Chinese ancient architecture by system dynamics view: the factors we call structure, practical, aesthetic judgment, economy affect each other. The trend of the using of the curved roof was increased a lot at first, and then reached a balance eventually; the explanation itself has caused and satisfied my interest of a kind of research. But something more important is that I have cemented an opinion here: in our world, physical and mental (we call it a system), so many social phenomena exist under the control of different basic factors. Its more complicated than we expect most of the time. Luckily the system dynamics view makes us face the complicating world in a deeper, wider sight, and retrace the procedure of its former and change. Then we can make sense of world better. So this kind of try has encouraged me a lot.
The system thinking is a kind of new thinking mode that fostering the creative ability. It already has some successful applied experience abroad, particularly in education. In the chemistry teaching especially the calculation of chemical equation of high schools，students are always puzzled by the numerous and complicated superficies of chemical equation and hardly grasp its mathematics essence，which result in bad teaching effect.
This dissertation makes some beneficial quests. Aiming at the relevant problem of the calculation of chemical equation, we put up some teaching practice in 5 classes by using the system thinking method and its related software STELLA, such as the teacher's brief introduction to the software, the basic calculation model establishment way and students activity etc. In this process, students can hold the calculation regulation more effectively. At the same time, the study moving ability between teachers and students also improves dramatically, which leads to the exciting development in other realms.
In this paper, I try to grasp the inner significance of abnormally sustaining house price growth, or so-called house market bubble in Shanghai real estate industry by the tool of system dynamics which especially focuses on the systems with highly dynamic characteristics, and complicated feedback relationships involved, which is consistent with the real estate market system. The most fundamental purpose of this project is to see whether it is the speculators intervention that causes the problem of unsuitable high price in Shanghai house market or not and to see what kind of impacts both on the aspects of society and economic fields will be after the trend of speculation is quenched. This paper mainly divides the system into 6 parts, population and economy sector, family house demand sector, speculators demand sector, speculators profitability sector, house price sector, and house construction and sale sector to analyze how these subsystem can directly or indirectly work on the whole real estate industry in Shanghai.
The integration of information systems and business process will affect competitive advantages of firms. In order to develop information system, modeling of business process is a fundamental work of system analysis and design. System dynamics is useful to solve non-linear, complex, time delay and feedback problems of business processes. However it still belongs to a special field of modeling language because it cant be integrated well with information systems in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to integrate system dynamics with UML and thus they can be developed synchronously during information systems implementation in enterprise. For this reason, integrated development process and system architecture with system dynamics and UML have also been proposed in this paper.
This paper revisits the macro-economic modelling and medium term scenarios undertaken at the New Zealand Planning Council (now disbanded) in the mid 1980's. The following major reports were published: "A Macro-Economic Model and Scenarios to 1995" (by Eric Haywood & Bob Cavana) and "Towards 1995: Patterns of National and Sectoral Development" (by Dennis Rose, Adolf Stroombergen, et al). These reports discussed the development and use of a macro-economic system dynamics model (SDMACRO), used to generate trends for the main macro-economic variables, and a general equilibrium price sensitive sectoral model (JULIANNE), which generated compatible sectoral and national forecasts of a range of variables for each of 22 sectors for nominated years. The (JULIANNE) model used outputs from (SDMACRO) as constraints and inputs. A brief overview of the SDMACRO model and its use at the NZ Planning Council will be presented. Also, the reforms of the New Zealand economy that have taken place since the mid 1980s will be summarised and a comparison of the SDMACRO scenarios will be provided against what actually happened over the period between 1985 to 1995. Finally, the paper indicates the development that has taken place with the macro-economic model and how it is currently being used.
A method of overall analysis for a compared evaluation of various nuclear fission and fourth generation units is here described. In this paper a series of questions related to the near-term deployment of new nuclear technologies in the US and Worldwide are answered and validated by reproducing the mechanisms that drove the nuclear market to the actual configuration. It is then presented a simplified model of the form often used to project market competition ad hoc configured for the case of the energy production by nuclear power. The reproduced mechanisms of interest as well as the out coming model had been designed following the SD approach since it was considered a most suitable and necessary tool for the research and evaluation of the typical feedback effects, which are characteristic of the destination market.
The most outstanding mechanism in terms of importance, uniqueness and significance was undoubtedly the lock-in effect, also referred to as long-term market domination. According to the lock-in phenomenon, even though a nuclear power plant is less attractive from a technical point of view it can take control of the market by being the first to be installed or by moving faster along its learning curve.