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- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 2009 July 26-2009 July 30
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, b3584c6b53c3f58e0202549d7d851f84, and 4818cb531cdd68d6ec6af3f291216fc7
- Description:
- The article presents some insights from ongoing research on sustainable organizational change. It focuses on a concept of improvements actions conducted by teams within manufacturing organization. There are considered two types of approaches, namely bottom-up - example of which are empowered, small, cross-functional teams; and top-down - large teams following rigorous problem solving methodologies. In order to investigate impact of small teams and large teams on the organizational system structure a System Dynamics model was developed. The model investigates the effectiveness of both kinds of approaches from the perspective of sustainable organizational change effort. The analysis of the model and simulation results is supported by example of successful organizational change in Lima Refinery. In the conclusion section the implications for sustainable organizational change efforts are presented.
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- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 2009 July 26-2009 July 30
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, b3584c6b53c3f58e0202549d7d851f84, and 4818cb531cdd68d6ec6af3f291216fc7
- Description:
- Although system dynamics practitioners appeal to a bathtub analogy to explain the basic concepts of
-
- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 2009 July 26-2009 July 30
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, b3584c6b53c3f58e0202549d7d851f84, and 4818cb531cdd68d6ec6af3f291216fc7
- Description:
- Proper analysis of the financial statements of a company provides valuable insights into financial performance. Financial ratio analysis, a principal tool of financial analysis, determines a company's ability to raise external financing. In the present work, detailed System Dynamics (SD) modeling and analysis of the financial performance of a shore based integrated steel plant is undertaken. The key financial ratios used for simulation and analysis are (i) Liquidity ratios (ii) Turnover ratios and (iii) Profitability ratios over a period of 20 years from 1994. SD model is successfully applied to portray the dynamic behaviour of the financial system of the plant.
-
- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 2009 July 26-2009 July 30
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, b3584c6b53c3f58e0202549d7d851f84, and 4818cb531cdd68d6ec6af3f291216fc7
- Description:
- In 1973, the first oil crisis leaded most countries to experience economic problems due to sudden unbalance in their trade balance. This leads to reactions, limited at the beginning due to short term inelasticity of petroleum demand, but relevant in long term. Brazil started the Proalcool program, which extended from 1979 to 1990, with the use of ethanol cars (E-100). In 1990 this program was ended, due to economic problems. A decline in international petroleum prices and an increase in international sugar prices, leaded to shortage of ethanol. This shortage made the users confidence to decline. From that point on, ethanol cars acquisitions almost dropped to zero. In 2003 a technological innovation, the flex fuel electronic injection, was launched and was a huge success. In approximately three years, about 85% of all cars sold in Brazil were using this technology. It caused a boom in ethanol industry which competes in terms of resources with sugar industry. This paper presents a framework to simulate the first period of the overall program which lasts from 1970 to 2003.
-
- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 2009 July 26-2009 July 30
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, b3584c6b53c3f58e0202549d7d851f84, and 4818cb531cdd68d6ec6af3f291216fc7
- Description:
- The 2009 winner of the Dana Meadows Student Award for the best student paper presented at the annual conference is Timothy Taylor at the Construction Engineering and Management Program, Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, for the paper Science, engineering, and technology in the policy process for natural systems. 2009 Honorable Mentions (equally ranked): Howard Hao-Chun Chuang at the Department of Information and Operations Management, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University for the paper Team Psychological Safety and Group Learning: Cycle-Time Reduction for IT-enabled Collaborative Product Development and Margaret Stringfellow at M.I.T., for the paper Healthcare Industry Incentive Structures Pressure System Operators to Operate in a High-risk State.
-
- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 2009 July 26-2009 July 30
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, b3584c6b53c3f58e0202549d7d851f84, and 4818cb531cdd68d6ec6af3f291216fc7
- Description:
- The success of many open source applications has motivated commercial firms to explore how they can benefit from opening their software platforms in hope of getting free high quality contributors and more complementary products. Yet the openness decision is tightly coupled with the pricing of the software (e.g. openness limits the price that can be charged) and the reinforcing feedback loops of network effects and complementary products. In this paper we explore how there interconnections impact the optimum pricing and openness decision for two firms in competition. Reinforcing loops increase the value of early market lead and put pressure on the competing firms to seek such advantage. We show that the competitive equilibrium under strong reinforcing loops calls for highly open software products with deep early discounts, which may significantly compromise the profitability of the players in the market. Proprietary platforms and higher prices are favored in the absence of these loops.
-
- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 2009 July 26-2009 July 30
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, b3584c6b53c3f58e0202549d7d851f84, and 4818cb531cdd68d6ec6af3f291216fc7
- Description:
- Steel making is an energy intensive industry and for this reason, energy prices, especially oil and natural gas prices, have an important effect on this industry. In 2008, the sharp rise of crude oil as well as iron ore price caused the sharp rise of steel price because of the rise in prices of key production factors. But Iran's producers experienced almost no rise in their production factor prices especially key factors of energy and iron ore prices. As a matter of fact, inexpensive energy and iron ore are competitive advantages of steel makers in Iran because the huge natural resources of the country let the government to provide inexpensive production factors for the industry. But these inexpensive factors have some side effects that one of them is on the stock price of steel makers in stock market.
-
- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 2009 July 26-2009 July 30
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, b3584c6b53c3f58e0202549d7d851f84, and 4818cb531cdd68d6ec6af3f291216fc7
- Description:
- Iran is a resource-based country and these resources have brought advantages and disadvantages for the country. It seems that disadvantages are results of mismanagement of the resources and not the existence of resources. Fuel subsidy is an example of such mismanagements. Actually while fuel subsidies are common in the Middle East, the oil-richest place of the world, Iranian domestic fuel prices are among the lowest in the world. The low fuel prices, population and urbanization growth caused growth of fuel consumption and consequently growth of subsidies. But because nothing can grow forever, two years ago the government had to start rationing plan to reduce the growth of consumption due to budget and gasoline stock limitations.
-
- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 2009 July 26-2009 July 30
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, b3584c6b53c3f58e0202549d7d851f84, and 4818cb531cdd68d6ec6af3f291216fc7
- Description:
- This paper provides a system approach to the analysis of the property markets by first setting out a high level model of the market. The imperfections in information and distortions in such markets are widely acknowledged and accounted for while the role of legal, financial and social institutions being emphasised. The rate of production in the property markets in most advanced economies is a function of institutional factors as developed over time representing unique and path-dependent characteristics. The paper describes the main factors that have gone into the production of a general System Dynamics simulation model of the property markets which further focuses on the characteristics of the UK housing market as a case study and provides an analysis of its current structure. The paper indicates how in the absence of reliable and sufficient information simulation modelling can aid decision making in the real estate. As an imperfect market the role and potential areas of impact of governmental policy are outlined. The effects of tightening worldwide credit regimes on the UK construction industry are included in the model. The relationships between the credit crunch and the behaviour of the construction industry are identified and are explored. The analysis presented in the paper concludes with potential scenarios for determining the future behaviour of the market.
-
- Type:
- Document
- Date Created:
- 2009 July 26-2009 July 30
- Collection:
- System Dynamic Society Records
- Collecting Area:
- University Archives
- Collection ID:
- ua435
- Parent Record(s):
- 23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8, b3584c6b53c3f58e0202549d7d851f84, and 4818cb531cdd68d6ec6af3f291216fc7
- Description:
- This paper presents a brief discourse on chaotic behaviour and provides an implementation of a classical example from existing chaos theory; the Lorenz strange attractor. The implementation is carried out using standard System Dynamics software and techniques. The paper then goes on to describe a classical buffered feedback system; the Ktesibios clock. The implementation of this feedback system is again carried out using standard System Dynamics software and techniques. Both systems are then amalgamated to unite the butterfly effect of the Lorenz attractor with the buffered nature of the water clock. It is postulated that the resultant taming of the chaotic behaviour generated by the Lorenz attractor through the feedback buffer of the Ktesibios machine is common to many systems; brief examples are given. It is concluded that, in some cases at least, it is the overwhelming of the buffer that leads to a tipping point returning the whole system to a state of chaotic behaviour. Implementing a model of a natural buffered system with chaotic input is identified as an area for further work.