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Posted by ""Goncalves, Paulo"" <pgoncalves@exchange.sba.miami.edu>

Dear Colleagues:

I am writing to invite you to give a talk on a session on ""Behavioral Dynamics in Operations"" that I am organizing at the 2007 INFORMS Meeting, which will take place in Seattle from November 4 to November 7, 2007. Recent research trends in operations management have focused on incorporating aspects of behavioral theory and dynamics to explain common OM issues, shifting the emphasis from a normative approach to a more descriptive one. The emphasis on behavioral theory is perhaps best reflected by the creation of a new Behavior Operations department at POMS, seeking papers ""that further our understanding of operations by explicitly accounting for empirically observed human tendencies and influences, such as decision biases, cognitive limitations, individual preferences, and social institutions.""

Since system dynamics has traditionally embraced behavioral theory as a solid foundation to explain the formation of decision heuristics/biases and its implications to organizations, it is well aligned with the current interest of many operations managers. Presenting at the conference is an opportunity to build bridges among scholars with similar interests trained in different methodological backgrounds as well as show case the best research in system dynamics. The emphasis of the session is on operations broadly speaking, including manufacturing and service processes, supply chain management, product development, and technology management. The session will hold three (perhaps four) papers. If you are interested in giving a talk, please respond to this email by April 30, including the title and abstract of your talk.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Paulo

Paulo Goncalves
Assistant Professor in Management Science University of Miami School of Business Administration KE 404, Coral Gables, FL, 33124 Posted by ""Goncalves, Paulo"" <pgoncalves@exchange.sba.miami.edu>
posting date Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:52:11 -0400 _______________________________________________

Posted by Kazem Yaghootkar <yaghootkar@yahoo.com>

Dear Paulo
It is very nice to know that the application of System Dynamics in Operation
is again getting some attention. In fact, I was a bit disappointed about
the little attention paid to the application of System Dynamics in operations.
Although some of the very good models including the Bear game are about how
to manage operations, I have not seen much done about the application of
System Dynamics in operations recently. Personally I have found ""The Behavioural
Dynamics in Operations"" an untouched area of research. I am doing my PhD in
Manchester Business School and I am doing an empirically based analysis of
the organisational and operational issues which reduces product development
efficiency in multiproject environments. Through my empirical investigation
I found that besides resource based reasons, there are many other soft
factors(dynamics) which prevent organisations to transform from firefighting
to frontloading mode.

However I have some difficulties with my model which I think is generic for
anyone who is working on ""Behavioural Dynamics in Operations"". For example
one difficulty is the incompatibility of aggregation level. Usually the
behavioural dynamics are at high level of aggregation while the operations
dynamics are at low or medium level of aggregation.

I am sure your session in the INFORMS meeting will be an invaluable chance
for the System Dynamists working on ""Behavioural Dynamics in Operations"" to
share their experiences about the generic difficulties of doing research in
this area. Unfortunately for logistics reasons it is difficult for me to attend
IFORMS meeting, but I am more than happy to share my experience in this area
with anyone interested. So if there is anyone interested please contact me.

Kazem Yaghootkar
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Kazem Yaghootkar, PhD Candidate
CQE, PMP, Six Sigma BB
Manchester Business School
Posted by Kazem Yaghootkar <yaghootkar@yahoo.com> posting date Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:44:18 +0100 (BST) _______________________________________________

Posted by Jean-Jacques Laublé <jean-jacques.lauble@wanadoo.fr>

Hi Kazem

I am not doing research about operations, but adjusting modelling work with ground floor necessities has been one of my principal difficulties.
All of my modelling have been oriented towards ground operations so far.
There are two ways of adjusting the necessity of a high level of aggregation with ground operation. One can use both at the same time.

Taking a concrete example suppose that the subject is a factory making 100 products and wanting to plan how much of each products will be produced the next semester.
A high level model exists but where production is not disaggregated at all.
The model does not precise the exact production of each product.
Disaggregating may be very time consuming eventually impossible, due to the lack of disaggregated data for example.
At the operational level people need to know what production is planned for each product.

Suppose that the model advice is to increase production by 10%.
At the operational level, people will find this impossible to realize concretely and uniformly for each product.

'The production of XYZ can be increased but it is absurd to increase production of ZZZ.'
by example.

One solution is to disaggregate a little the model for instance down to 10 families of product and ask the operating agents to aggregate the 100 products into 10 families having the best common characteristics.

For example one of the characteristic can be the possibility to increase concretely or not the production.
The choice of the families will be critical.

Once this is done, there will always be some dissatisfaction at the ground level, but it will be necessary to explain that the objective is to find a global amelioration even if in some cases the detailed adjustment is not correctly done and that it can always be corrected later on.

The other solution that can be mixed with the first one and if, inside the family, there are still insupportable policies, to define factors that are accepted and that can modulate the detailed policy, with positive or negative adjustment, trying to maintain the overall family policy to the level advised. The family can be the whole products if disaggregating the model is too complex. There must be some arbitration to avoid exaggeration.
For instance at the ground level, people overestimate the effect of detailed policy upon the overall results.

One of the great advantage of operations over strategy is that one can adjust with the time, policies and that one must understand that adjustment takes time and learning from experience, but that due to the relative short cycle of decisions, any bad decision can be relatively quickly corrected.

Combining both approaches is what I have done so far and it works well in my case.
Regards.
Jean-Jacques Laublé
Posted by Jean-Jacques Laublé <jean-jacques.lauble@wanadoo.fr> posting date Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:18:21 +0200 _______________________________________________