Sustainability Calling

5The Entropy of Systems

5.1. System entropy: general considerations

5.1.1. Introduction

The issues of sustainability, reversibility, diversity and perpetuation of organisms, systems or time are raised in this chapter. We discuss several application areas related to automated processes in a company. More precisely, we discuss some mechanisms, principles and concepts related to entropy and we will transpose them in different areas such as:

1. basic information used in any process;
2. reasoning and solution determination in decision-making;
3. hardware, manufactured products, software, services and applications, and more generally, information systems (IS);
4. evolution and impact of changes in industrial systems, organizations, economic or administrative structures.

This chapter is thus intended to define some concepts related to entropy and sustainability, and then to better understand how to design a best-of-breed production system, why we use a particular approach to designing and developing decision support systems (DSS) for the management and control of complex systems, and how they can be improved and enhanced over time.

5.1.2. Information and its underlying role in message and decision significance

Information is a basic concept widely used in every system: IS, DSS, planning/scheduling, etc. Its main principles relevant to information theory, associated with information technologies, were first developed in the telecommunication industry. There was initially a momentous need related ...