Systems Design

Researchers and practitioners alike are in general agreement that the public sector is increasingly tasked with managing 'complex problems'. Many authors have warned that the established practices in government are not sufficient to deal with such problems. The integration of systems thinking in design practice has been advocated as a promising approach to understand and more effectively deal with the increasing complexity of

This dissertation aims to aid in the understanding of Mass Customization. It is recently presented as a new business strategy not only for Industries but also for any sort of business activities. State of art theories, business strategies and aspects, such as Open Innovation and Customer - driven value creation are addressed to support the idea of Mass Customization. Tools and techniques for industries are classified according to their field of appliance. In particular, the tools are classified into the following fields; Marketing, Product Development and Data Management, Production Design, Production Management and Logistics. The contribution to Operations Management through the field of Production Systems Design & Management is held by the research that is focused on Flow Production Lines, and more specifically on Continuous Flow Manufacturing. The most well established techniques of Flow Production are recognized as H. Ford’s System and Toyota Production System. Nowadays, they are expressed by the efforts of implementing the Lean Production principles. How Mass Customization is involved in a system of Flow Production? How the production flow reacts by the exertion of Mass Customization in Flow Production? Can production flow be customized according to demand? Is it efficient or not? The study of production flow can give the answers. In this dissertation, an algorithmic procedure of designing Flow Production Systems. The purpose is to customize the flow in accordance with demand. The algorithmic procedure is performed by a system that is named as Flow Customizer™ v.1 (stands for version 1). The procedure can be implemented in cases that either demand or the number of final products change. The implementation of the results of Flow Customizer™ v.1 is assessed as beneficial or not according to each case study. The procedure is described by specific phases and steps that are displayed by a flow chart. The Flow Production System that is redesigned by the Flow Customizer™ v.1 consists of Production Modules that are connected to each other through a Kanban System. The procedure’s function and its result of a Modularized Production System is explained by an application paradigm. Moreover, pieces of information from an industrial case study about organizing two production line’s resources are subjected. Calculation, optimization and also management decision issues are indicated through the procedure of designing Flow Production Systems. The results that derive from the function of this system are addressed. Main conclusions and future research directions are noted.

The authors study collaborative modeling by analyzing conversations and loud thinking during modeling sessions and the resulting models themselves. They identify the basic activities of the modeling teams on the social, pragmatic, semantic and syntactic levels and derive a schema for the pragmatic level. The authors’ main conclusion is that team-based modeling is largely a negotiation process. Drawing on these results the authors derive an architecture of a system that supports the distributed development of conceptual models.

A short introduction to the author's critical systems heuristics (CSH), a framework for reflective professional practice based in critical systems thinking and practical philosophy.

Abstract: Health care planning, city and regional planning, energy and transportation planning, environmental design, social policy planning and other areas of social systems design are becoming issues of increasing concern to policy makers. Faced with complex steering problems that may have far-reaching implications, they expect help from applied disciplines such as operations research, systems design, technology assessment, program evaluation, and many others; but these approaches rarely offer much help in critically identifying and reflecting on the normative implications of the problem definitions and solutions they inspire. Critical systems heuristics (CSH) is a framework to this end. This paper, an early short introduction to CSH that is still widely used today, introduces some key concepts of CSH and briefly discusses their significance for "rational" practice.

Design, delivery and improvement processes in healthcare is of great challenge due to increasing pressures on healthcare systems alongside inherent complexities, resulting in limited benefits or unforeseen consequences. A recent Systems Approach framework has aimed at responding to the calls about implementing a more holistic approach. Though being an approach in its own right that can iteratively and systematically structure, guide, and/or facilitate design and improvement projects in healthcare, it can also augment existing approaches that have already place in healthcare designers' and improvement practitioners' agendas. Thus, the objective of this paper is to compare and contrast the questions, activities, and tools of the Systems Approach with processes of other major improvement approaches in healthcare to demonstrate their coverages, overlaps, and extended and new opportunities to pursue in the light of the Systems Approach.

Requirements elicitation impacts software quality. It is a set of activities that aims to gather user needs towards the production of user requirement specification. It must be comprehensive and easy to understand by the stakeholders. This paper describes a practical method of user requirements elicitation as input to the design of the proposed mobile class record application for teacher educators. Specifically, this paper presents the phases of user requirements gathering during the earlier analysis of the development of m-Class Record, a stand-alone Android-based class record application for teacher educators. This paper also presents the functional requirements of the proposed mobile application and its degree of need as perceived by the target users. The requirement elicitation phases in this study include leveling of perceptions, defining features, defining processes and information, and finalization and turnover. The requirement elicitation framework used in this study is efficient and grounded with practical methods and approaches appropriate to the project setting and environment. The result shows that all functionalities are highly needed. The result implies that all specifications are imperative to the respondents, and all functionalities are necessary for the proposed mobile class record application.

Mobile phones come in different shapes and sizes. Owners of GSM phones are sometimes classed by the type of phone(s)
they own and the functionalities the phones can perform. The demand for functionalities that come with GSM phones has
hence increased significantly. The major striking features that most users clamor for apart from the phone having digital
camera/recording facilities is the ability of their phones to store more data – or at least have some sort of extended memory - ,
display a high level of security and provide for backup of phone data (in case of any mishap to the phone). As more and more
functionalities are added to these phones, the more expensive they become. Hence these days, we find phones costing hundreds of thousands of naira. Not all can afford phones this expensive. Everyone wants to maximize and improve on what
he already has. The average man looks for means by which he can extend the functionalities that come with his phone. This
study examined how mobile phones work, designed graphical user interfaces, the application and the database used for the
implementation. This designed application backs up mobile phone and SIM data (contacts and SMS) on the computer
storage. It also allows for easy retrieval and restoration of the data to phone memory when the need arises. The objectives
considered in the design included: user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) for user interaction; modular subroutines, methods and functions that retrieves data from the phone and stores it on the computer memory; modular subroutines,
methods and functions that retrieves data from the SIM and stores it on the computer memory; modular subroutines and
functions that send data from the computer back to the phone; portable database for storing and retrieving the data.

This study sought to; determine levels of income generated from Solid Waste Management (SWM) practices, assess contribution of the income to participating households’ (HHs) socio-economics and make policy recommendations to exploit existing potential in SWM practices. 121 HHs were surveyed from five phases of Dandora, Kenya. Respondents were selected through systematic sampling by phase.Relationships between SWM practices and household socioeconomic factors were established through descriptive analysis and correlations. Findings showed SWM practices had positive influence on socioeconomic lives of participants. Mean monthly
income from SWM practices (Collection and Disposal, Recycling, and Minimization) were KShs 15941.28/=, KShs
16170.45/= and KShs 9467.50/= per household respectively. Total income of KShs 102,481,259/= per month from SWM Practices for the 6800HHs under study, contributed 82.47% of the total HH socioeconomic expenditure which included but not limited to education, food, health and housing expenses. These expenses constituted 55%, 21%, 18%, and 5% of total income respectively implying that HHs had other sources of income to supplement income from SWM practices. Correlation between total income and total expenses revealed a weak but positive correlation (r=0.389, at p=0.01) that was significant. The researcher recommends separation of waste at household level for easier collection, disposal and recycling; regular waste collection to avoid creation of mini-dumps in residential areas; and support for research and popularization of adoption of appropriate and low cost SWM technologies locally available to reduce handling cost of recyclable waste. Due to pollution of water supplied to HHs by leachate water from waste dumps, a separate cell should be provided at the sanitary landfill for the ashes of incinerated hazardous wastes and composting of solid waste at household level especially by those farming to generate organic manure for organic farming. The government should develop and implement policies that outline practical approaches to SWM practices.

Rev. 2015 version of a review of C.W. Churchman’s "The Design of Inquiring Systems," New York: Basic Books, 1971, originally published in Journal of the Operational Research Society, 36 (9) 1985, pp. 873-876.

This expanded and updated postpublication version is of 4 November 2015, prepared for Ulrich's Bimonthly, November-December 2015, in both HTML and PDF versions. See
http://wulrich.com/bimonthly_november2015.html and
http://wulrich.com/downloads/ulrich_2015h.pdf

How can we develop competence in research and professional practice? This essay tries to answer the question from the perspective of critical systems thinking, that is, through an approach that aims to promote reflective research and practice. The paper is written for research students and practitioners in different professional fields. It addresses them in a direct and personal way.

Note: This article is a considerably expanded version of the Lincoln School of Management Working Paper No. 22 of June 1998 (also available in this site).
A further-expanded and updated version was prepared for Ulrich's Bimonthly, July-August 2017 (Vol. 15, No. 4, 28 August 2017) and is equally available in the Academia.edu site, see Section "Philosophy for Professionals – on Good practice," entry "Ulrich, W. (2017)".

This entry on "Critical systems thinking" (CST), prepared for a major encyclopedia in the field of Operations Research and Management Science, offers a non-partisan, comparative account of CST's two major strands, CSH and TSI. A new, integrative understanding of CST emerges in which both strands, although in different ways, focus on enhancing the contextual sophistication of professionals.

C. West Churchman was a major pioneer of operations research, management science, and "the systems approach" to applied science. Written shortly after his death in March 2004, this obituary offers a short biography of Churchman; an introduction to some central themes of his thinking; and a personal appreciation of what remains of his work and how we might carry it forward today.

This workshop draws on feminist and other critical methodologies to construct interdisciplinary interventions in the design of machine learning systems. Theoretical concepts of "figuration", "situating/situated knowledge", "critical fabulation/speculation," and "diffraction" are explored through hands-on experimentation to imagine and design machine learning systems in a more situated, inclusive, contextualize and accountable way. Through this "theory turned practice" approach the workshop aims to address systemic socio-cultural biases and develop more socially responsible frameworks of design. The workshop provides space for building a network for future research on interdisciplinary machine learning systems design.

A personal appreciation of C.W. Churchman's philosophy of social systems design, and the role it played in the author's work on critical systems heuristics.

Revised version of a Guest Editorial, originally titled "C. West Churchman – 75 Years," which served as the introduction to a Special Issue of the journal Systems Practice (now Systemic Practice and Action Research) in honor of C.W. Churchman's 75th anniversary in August 1988. First uploaded to Academia.edu in April 2015.

The Guest Editorial in turn was based on an essay titled "An appreciation of C. West Churchman," which was originally written for the section "Luminaries of the Systems Approach" of the web site of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), first published on 29 August 1999 and updated several times (last update 4 Nov 2009). A major revision of 12 Nov 2002 was subsequently published in both HTML and PDF formats in the section "A Tribute to C.W. Churchman" of the author's home page, followed by a final revision of 26 March 2009 (last updated 16 Jan 2016). See the PDF file made available here for the essay history.

The aim of this paper is to rethink games and game design within the theory of self-producing interaction systems. With this research, I seek to identify several dynamics of play and engagement elicited by games that, by extension, can serve as game design parameters. The research is oriented toward an analysis of football (soccer) and Pokémon GO within the context of Niklas Luhmann's (2002/2012) theoretical framework of autopoiesis (i.e., self-producing interaction systems). The theoretical discussion of play situations in the two games reveals five concentric interaction systems through which games motivate play and engagement. These game dynamics are continuing simultaneous communication, multiple observations, double expectations, system autonomy, and unexpectedness through system coupling. The study further shows that when a game succeeds in eliciting these dimensions, functional, continuous, and changing structures allow for the emergence of numerous behaviors and the production of new interaction systems.

Paper discusses principles of the formation of redundancy classification for the design of fault tolerant computer controlled systems. Brief review of approaches to defining redundancy classification is presented including Avizienis/Laprie, Russian reliability Standard and ICSAN Lab27.The advantages and drawback of these classifications are discussed. Analysis of principles to which classification should match is presented and functions of such classification such as definitive, characteristic and predictive are discussed. General problems of design related to redundancy are shown and directions of further research in the area of fundamentals of the design of fault tolerant computer systems are outlined. A need for the redundancy classification with substantial predictive power is especially emphasized.

Network intrusion detection has remained a field of rigorous research over the past few years. Advances in computing performance, in terms of processing power and storage, have allowed the use of resource-intensive intelligent algorithms, to detect intrusive activities, in a timely manner. Genetic Algorithms have emerged as a powerful domain-independent technique to facilitate searching of the most effective set of rules, to differentiate between normal and anomalous network traffic. The scope of research for developing cutting-edge and effective GA-based intrusion detection systems, has rapidly expanded to keep pace with variant attack types, increasingly witnessed from the adversary class. In this paper, we propose a GA-based technique for effectively identifying network intrusion attempts, and clearly differentiating these from normal network traffic. The performance of the proposed scheme is studied and analyzed on the KDD-99 intrusion benchmark data set. We performed a simulation-based analysis of the proposed scheme, with results strengthening our findings, and providing us directions for future work.

Analyzing how collective action leading to mass innovation emerges against the backdrop of an increasingly connected world, we introduce the concept of collective generativity as a new theoretical lens for understanding the ability of distributed communities to engage collectively in bottom-up processes of creation and innovation. Applying this lens allows us to understand how collective generativity emerges and evolves and how to design systems and spaces that evoke and enhance this communal generative capacity. In this paper, we explore the underpinnings of collective generativity: connectivity, distributed cognition, collective action and mass innovation. Jointly, these theoretical insights are used to derive a set of design principles for the development of co-generative systems, which are conducive to mass collective action and innovation. Finally, we demonstrate our thesis with an illustrative vignette of collective generativity and conclude with several implications for futur...