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.
Kaplan and Norton propose a double-loop process that integrates the concepts of Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Map to support managers to define and implement the firm strategy more effectively. The BSC is a performance management system based on a set of few and critical indicators. These key performance indicators are linked together in a causal diagram that represents the hypotheses about the strategy. This approach supports what Argyris calls double-loop learning which facilitates the strategic learning of managers and leads to better performance. This type of learning produces changes in manager assumptions about cause-and-effect relationships and leads to a better understanding of the context, what means a process by which managers can explicit and improve their mental models about the business system. This article describes a simulation-based research for testing a system of hypotheses about the influence of the BSC approach on strategic learning and performance, which uses a System Dynamics-based micro world.
Society membership has grown by over 40% from 1999, but the representation of women has remained flat at 12%. Thus, in July 2004 the Policy Council unanimously approved the formation of a committee to work on tracking and improving the diversity of the System Dynamics Society. Last October, a pilot diversity survey was included in the annual membership renewals. In the course of developing the survey, members raised important questions about how diversity should be defined for the System Dynamics Society. More importantly, the initial results suggested potential solutions. Both issues raised questions that need to be discussed. How should diversity be defined with respect to the System Dynamics Society? How does diversity affect participation at conferences and in the society? What are some possible solutions? Please join us in this roundtable discussion on diversity in the System Dynamics Society.
Faced with new challenges in managing the cyclical and volatile business environment, management at a Commodity Plastic (COM-P) Company agreed to apply System Dynamics (SD) to support strategy development. A SD model of COM-P industry was built by adapting the Pulp and Paper Model. The structure of COM-P Index Price creation was mapped and added to the generic model. The following were investigated: a) The effect of current delays in adjusting prices on phantom demand, on capacity utilization and shipment rates; b) The phenomenon of Phantom demand or pre-buying when customers perceive that prices may be about to go up was modeled; c) By applying the model, the amount of margin lost or gained by the industry due to the price protection terms in the contracts was estimated; d) The risk in the top ten long term contracts under different supply and demand conditions and oil prices in order to support the sales organization with their negotiations; e) The model was applied to get guidance on capital investment timing and to assess the effect of different oil prices and supply & demand scenarios on the profitability of new investments. In many cases the results were counter-intuitive.
This paper takes a system dynamics perspective of the contemporary trend of Offshoring Knowledge Worker jobs from USA to gain a better and deeper understanding of the results and implications of the trend, its impact on the jobs and workforce dynamics. The results not only support the viewpoint of economists that offshoring is beneficial to the economy, but also highlight another impending phenomena just round the corner, namely the slow rate of growth of workforce. Net U.S. workforce growth is slowing because seventy-one million baby boomers are beginning to retire. In this context, model outputs suggest that offshoring is postponing the undesirable state of U.S. jobs outstripping the U.S. workforce by nearly five years. Thereby, policy-makers have longer to find effective solutions to tackle the impending shortage of workforce in decades to follow. The model suggests that offshoring could not have come at a better time for the US economy.