Improving Complex Systems Today

As the main theme of Improving Complex Systems Today implies, this book is intended to provide readers with a new perspective on concurrent engineering from the standpoint of systems engineering. It can serve as a versatile tool to help readers to navigate the ever-changing state of this particular field. The primary focus of concurrent engineering was, at first, on bringing downstream information as far upstream as possible by introducing parallel processing in order to reduce time to market and to prevent errors at a later stage which would sometimes cause irrevocable damage. Up to now, numerous new concepts, methodologies and tools have been developed, but over concurrent engineering’s 20-year history the situation has changed extensively. Now, industry has to work in the global marketplace and to cope with diversifying requirements and increasing complexities. Such globalization and diversification necessitate collaboration across different fields and across national boundaries. Thus, the new concurrent engineering calls for a systems approach to gain global market competitiveness. Improving Complex Systems Today provides a new insight into concurrent engineering today.

The world we live in is increasingly complex. It throws up complex problems. This book is about tackling them. At ThinkPlace, we’ve pioneered the application of design thinking to complex challenges like climate change, family violence and global malnutrition. We work globally with governments, organisations and communities using a methodology – the Design SystemTM outlined in this book – that has been developed over more than a decade. We bring together different voices and help them to create better futures. If you’re one of those voices, or would like to be, this book is for you. It’s part roadmap, part instruction manual, but mostly it’s a clarion call for a new way of doing things: tackling the world’s biggest problems in a way that brings people together and produces positive, lasting change.

This book explores Complex System Governance (CSG)—an emerging field concerned with the design, execution, and evolution of essential functions necessary to ensure continued viability of a system. The book focuses on three primary development areas to better understand and utilize current developments CSG. First, the conceptual foundations for CSG are developed, from systems theory, management cybernetics, and governance. Second, a set of critical CSG topics are examined from conceptual as well as practice perspectives. Third, several development and application issues are discussed. Ultimately, CSG is positioned as an emerging field with strong theoretical grounding and significant implications for improving practices and performance to better address complex systems and their problems.

This book presents an internationally comprehensive perspective into the field of complex systems. It explores the challenges of and approaches to complexity from a broad range of disciplines, including big data, health care, medicine, mathematics, mechanical and systems engineering, air traffic control and finance. The book’s interdisciplinary character allows readers to identify transferable and mutually exclusive lessons learned among these disciplines and beyond. As such, it is well suited to the transfer of applications and methodologies between ostensibly incompatible disciplines. This book provides fresh perspectives on comparable issues of complexity from the top minds on systems thinking.

Nine innovative methods to think outside the box and solve complex system problems Managing Complex Systems provides specific tools and guidance needed to be a more creative and innovative thinker. Following the author's methodology, the reader will be better able to devise and implement nontraditional solutions to seemingly intractable complex problems. By challenging the reader to think in new and creative ways, the book offers a road map to success, whether measured in terms of competitive advantage, greater market share, improved productivity, or higher profits, all based upon better solutions to difficult problems. The first four chapters set the foundation for creative thinking by exploring the nature of large-scale systems and complexity, thinking inside and outside the box, and examples of how an inventive mind solves problems in both management and scientific domains. Subsequent chapters address nine focused methods that the author has formulated to help the reader think outside the box: * Broaden and generalize * Crossover * Question conventional wisdom * Back of the envelope * Expanding the dimensions * Obversity * Remove constraints * Thinking with pictures * Systems approach Real-life examples are provided for each method that demonstrate how the approach enhances problem solving and decision making in system development and management. Following the discussion of the nine methods, the author examines group decision making as well as additional creative thinking procedures devised by other researchers, including references that assist in exploring these methods in greater detail. The author ends with a wrap-up chapter that includes a test to help readers practice their tendencies toward creative thinking skills and action with respect to solving real-world problems. The nine methods discussed in this book have broad applicability and can be used successfully by managers with a wide range of responsibilities in business and technology. For anyone who is tired of the same old approach with the same old results, this book is essential reading.

The last few years have seen an extraordinary growth in many areas of complex systems. In the field of synergetics and cooperative behaviour in neural systems a new vocabulary emerged to describe discoveries of wide-ranging and fundamental phenomena, like for example artificial life, biocomplexity, cellular automata, chaos, criticality, fractals, learning systems, neural networks, non-linear dynamics, parallel computation, percolation, self-organization.One of the contributing factors to this growth is the extraordinary increase in computing power. Previously intractable non-linear systems are now amenable to analysis and simulation and parallel computers are ever more important in these areas.The book contains papers exploring many aspects of complex systems, covering theory and applications and deal with material drawn from many different disciplines and specialities.

Suitable as a reference for industry practitioners and as a textbook for classroom use, Case Studies in System of Systems, Enterprise Systems, and Complex Systems Engineering provides a clear understanding of the principles and practice of system of systems engineering (SoSE), enterprise systems engineering (ESE), and complex systems engineering (CSE). Multiple domain practitioners present and analyze case studies from a range of applications that demonstrate underlying principles and best practices of transdisciplinary systems engineering. A number of the case studies focus on addressing real human needs. Diverse approaches such as use of soft systems skills are illustrated, and other helpful techniques are also provided. The case studies describe, examine, analyze, and assess applications across a range of domains, including: Engineering management and systems engineering education Information technology business transformation and infrastructure engineering Cooperative framework for and cost management in the construction industry Supply chain modeling and decision analysis in distribution centers and logistics International development assistance in a foreign culture of education Value analysis in generating electrical energy through wind power Systemic risk and reliability assessment in banking Assessing emergencies and reducing errors in hospitals and health care systems Information fusion and operational resilience in disaster response systems Strategy and investment for capability developments in defense acquisition Layered, flexible, and decentralized enterprise architectures in military systems Enterprise transformation of the air traffic management and transport network Supplying you with a better understanding of SoSE, ESE, and CSE concepts and principles, the book highlights best practices and lessons learned as benchmarks that are applicable to other cases. If adopted correctly, the approaches outlined can facilitate significant progress in human affairs. The study of complex systems is still in its infancy, and it is likely to evolve for decades to come. While this book does not provide all the answers, it does establish a platform, through which analysis and knowledge application can take place and conclusions can be made in order to educate the next generation of systems engineers.

Provides a comprehensive overview and introduction to the concepts, methodologies, analysis, design and applications of metasynthetic computing and engineering. The author: • Presents an overview of complex systems, especially open complex giant systems such as the Internet, complex behavioural and social problems, and actionable knowledge discovery and delivery in the big data era. • Discusses ubiquitous intelligence in complex systems, including human intelligence, domain intelligence, social intelligence, network intelligence, data intelligence and machine intelligence, and their synergy through metasynthetic engineering. • Explains the concept and methodology of human-centred, human-machine-cooperated qualitative-to-quantitative metasynthesis for understanding and managing open complex giant systems, and its computing approach: metasynthetic computing. • Introduces techniques and tools for analysing and designing problem-solving systems for open complex problems and systems. Metasynthetic Computing and Engineering uses the systematology methodology in addressing system complexities in open complex giant systems, for which it may not only be effective to apply reductionism or holism. The book aims to encourage and inspire discussions, design, implementation and reflection of effective methodologies and tools for computing and engineering open complex systems and problems. Researchers, research students and practitioners in complex systems, artificial intelligence, data science, computer science, and even system science, cognitive science, behaviour science, and social science, will find this book invaluable.