Modeling and Visualization of Complex Systems and Enterprises: Explorations of Physical, Human, Economic, and Social Phenomena

Preface

The seeds for this book were sown almost 50 years ago when, as a budding engineer at Raytheon, I was given the assignment of determining the optimal number and types of spare parts to take on a submarine for the sonar system. I had to integrate reliability, maintainability, and availability models into an overall mission simulation to assess the effectiveness of alternative spare parts plans.

I have been immersed in mathematical and computational modeling ever since. For several years, I focused on operation and maintenance of complex vehicle and process systems, with particular emphasis on model-based decision aiding and training of personnel in these systems.

I next addressed design of new products and strategic business management. We developed a suite of software tools to support these processes and worked with over 100 companies and thousands of executives and senior managers. These intense experiences led to fascination with enterprises and the great difficulties they had with recognizing needs to change and especially accomplishing change.

Over much of the past decade, I have been immersed in transformation of the healthcare industry, often through collaborations with the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. It quickly became apparent that the poor performance of the US system could only be coherently understood by looking at the interactions of the multiple levels of the system.

Multi-level models of enterprise systems soon became a paradigm ...