Modeling for PDCA

[Bill Harris]

Bob,

>Bill,
>I read your comment with great interest. Were working with small farmers in
>production of sustainable coffee fields in remote Peru. The biggest problem
>is getting a handle on how to induce farmers to develop an afinity to the
>project... The experiment here is design a system that substitutes other-than-monetary
>inducement to establish stable long-term ralationships with a diversity of
>individuals. Does this sound like a an interesting exercise in simulation?

I got your message, but things are getting incredibly busy around here, and
my email is somewhat backlogged.

I wasnt sure if you were wondering if I would be interested in doing some
modeling or if you were looking for further pointers. While your
objectives sound _very_ worthwhile, I am simply out of time and capacity
right now to engage in anything else.

As far as pointers, I can offer a few suggestions in the realization you
probably know all of these things and more. Please dont take my comments
as arrogance; these are merely ideas that have helped me recently; you may
know them, or you may know they wouldnt work in your situation (working in
other cultures can be complicated, I realize).

The first thing that comes to mind is Peter Blocks book "Flawless
Consulting". It gives a practical approach to an approach that Ive found
very useful: Chris Argyriss action science. It was (and still is)
effective in fostering open and honest communications. While it isnt easy
to get into (my experience, at least), its been very worthwhile. Try
reading the Block book or any of a number of books by Argyris. (I had to
read several before I caught on well enough to use it.)

On a related note, I was impressed by a course on change management I took
from Implementation Management Associates, Inc., (800-752-9254). It taught
me something about looking at change from the point of view of the people
undergoing the change.

As far as modeling, I encourage you to try things. Read. As someone here
suggested, enter models into the computer and see if you can understand
what each piece is for. Try getting hold of Forresters "Industrial
Dynamics" or any of his other works. I liked Pughs "Intro. to System
Dynamics with Dynamo", although it was more focused at my line of work.

If you dont have a simulator, you should get one. I have iThink running
on a Mac, but Ive never compared it to any of the other commercial
products (PowerSim, etc.). If you need a free or cheap simulator to get
started, I have used EGO (free: see http://soback.kornet.nm.kr/~sddhkim/)
with reasonable success, although its taken a bit of time and some
discussion with the author to figure out how to use it properly. I have
also seen Dynasys, a shareware program
(http://members.aol.com/whupfeld/index.htm). I tried the German version,
and it looks pretty good. It lacks a couple of features I use, so I
probably wont continue to use it, but it appears easier to use in many
ways than EGO.

By the way, I have no connection to any of these people or ideas other than
they helped me at least once along the way.

Good luck in your endeavor.

Bill

--
Bill Harris Hewlett-Packard Co.
R&D Productivity Department Lake Stevens Division
domain: billh@lsid.hp.com M/S 330
phone: (206) 335-2200 8600 Soper Hill Road
fax: (206) 335-2828 Everett, WA 98205-1298

[Bill Harris]

Benny Budiman writes:

>advances in the fields. Many people share hopes that system dynamics
>modeling can be used as flight simulators to help turn the PDCA wheel ***
>in managing socio-economic systems.

Id inject the word faster here (***). Weve used simulation in such
systems to great advantage in terms of doing experiments much more rapidly
than one could try them on the real system (not to mention the clearer
insights which a good model can sometimes give).

Bill

--
Bill Harris Hewlett-Packard Co.
R&D Productivity Department Lake Stevens Division
domain: billh@lsid.hp.com M/S 330
phone: (206) 335-2200 8600 Soper Hill Road
fax: (206) 335-2828 Everett, WA 98205-1298

[bbens@MIT.EDU]

References: (0269 and 0268)

Ed (0269) wrote: "The engineer is generally designing and building a new
system."

Not always! What you described is one paradigm in R&D. Many process control
engineers have to "fix" processes that had been designed by other people.
This is one main reason for process optimization a la Taguchi and Statistical
Process Control--in addition to machine in-process control--in an integrated
effort to maximize quality and minimize waste.

Ed also wrote: "... to study thermoregulation ... build an SD model, run
simulations, examine the rat, improve the model, examine another - genetically
identical - rat ..."

Isnt this exactly the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) wheel as advocated by
Shewhart and, later, Deming in a continuous process improvement? It is
this "luxury" in science and technology that has contributed to the
advances in the fields. Many people share hopes that system dynamics
modeling can be used as flight simulators to help turn the PDCA wheel
in managing socio-economic systems.

Quoting GPR, Ed further wrote: "Circular causal structures"

Id buy this one too, although there are times in which further
explanation is needed. When this is the case, then identifying loops
as either balancing or reinforcing would be useful. Yes, it makes sense
to me to use "Circular Causal Structures" or "Causal Loops" for simplicity.

Regards,
Benny Budiman
bbens@MIT.EDU

["Robert M. Kane"]

Bill,
I read your comment with great interest. Were working with small farmers in
production of sustainable coffee fields in remote Peru. The biggest problem
is getting a handle on how to induce farmers to develop an afinity to the
project. We operate Mothers Clubs to engage the families and undertake
community improvement activities but we do so on a hit-or-miss, intuitive
basis. Its scarey to be spending what little money is available on projects
that may or may not provide real benefit to system success.

The experiment here is design a system that substitutes other-than-monetary
inducement to establish stable long-term ralationships with a diversity of
individuals. Does this sound like a an interesting exercise in simulation?
Im finding this analysis of feedback to be a little esoteric when we have
time-critical problems on our plates.

I would appreciate your thoughts. We can provide feedback on the accuracy of
simulation in the near-term.

Bob Kane, North American Coordinator
Institute for Sustainable Agriculture in the Tropics (SIAT)
Jaen, Peru
robert_kane@corp.cubic.com
http://www.ran.org
an
an_campaigns/amazonia/coffee.html