Systems thinking and system dynamics: A primer

Dangerfield, Brian

doi:10.1002/9781118762745.ch03

Cited by 24 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…These characteristics are very common in health systems (Taylor and Dangerfield, 2005;Dangerfield, 1999) and this explains the recent upward trend of SD applications in healthcare (Chang et al, 2017;Brailsford et al;2009). SD popularity stems also from its ability to capture the soft human behavioural aspects, which are very common in health contexts (Dangerfield, 2014;Taylor and Lane, 1998). SD combines qualitative and quantitative tools to evaluate and predict possible outcomes of policies and to facilitate organisational learning and knowledge elicitation among policy makers (Thompson et al, 2016;Andersen et al, 2007;Hämäläinen et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Should doctors use their judgment? How a system dynamics model elicited knowledge in neonatal care services

Lebcir

Atun

2020

Journal of the Operational Research Society

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Neonatal services, which provide care to babies born with medical complications, are under financial pressures in the United Kingdom (UK). The services are heavily regulated affecting efficiency. One possible solution is to reduce the Length of Stay (LoS) of babies and allow a degree of doctors' clinical judgment to make decisions. The aim of this paper is to determine the impact of using clinical judgment on neonatal services performance. To achieve this aim, a System Dynamics (SD) model was built and validated in a UK neonatal unit. The model was used initially to evaluate the impact of LoS reduction on performance as clinical judgment policies were rejected by participants. The counterintuitive results led to a behavioural change and participants accepted clinical judgment policies, which the results indicated should lead to considerable performance improvement. Results' implications and SD's modelling ability to foster learning and alter participants' perceptions and behaviour are discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Should doctors use their judgment? How a system dynamics model elicited knowledge in neonatal care services

Lebcir

Atun

2020

Journal of the Operational Research Society

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“…However, the models outputs were “well received” by the SMEs of the client to confirm the models’ behavioral face validities. 32…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Path and policy analyses: a sustainability study of military workforce supply chains

Wang

2019

Journal of Defense Modeling & Simulation

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This article presents two case studies using system dynamics to analyze the sustainability of military workforce supply chains. The first case is about multi-period force expansion. An analytical expression is presented to relate the expansion target, training capacity, and expansion period. The system dynamics model forecasts the personnel level achievable against the expansion target for varying input of training capacities. This can be used to inform military force planners about the required training capacity and timeframe to achieve the expansion. The second case examines the sustainability of the deployment of a volunteer-based Army reserve unit. The soldiers’ behavior changes due to their deployment experiences (in terms of willingness to deploy) are modeled and their impact on personnel availability is simulated. The second system dynamics model predicts the personnel level sustainability against the required number of soldiers to deploy. It provides insights regarding the required size of the pool of soldiers to support a deployed Army reserve unit, and promotes policy exploration to boost soldiers’ willingness to deploy. In conclusion, this work demonstrates the applicability of system dynamics to assist decision makers in “raising, training, and sustaining” military workforce supply chains.

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“…CLDs are sometimes considered a qualitative representation of a system [10]. We define CLDs formally in Definition 2.…”

Section: ) Causal-loop Diagrammentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast to discrete event simulation or other detailed modeling techniques that are based on individual entities, system dynamics techniques are based on aggregation, e.g., the number of people or products per day [10]. These techniques are able to cover a wide range of effects, including human factors, and model nonlinear relations at an aggregated level [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discovering System Dynamics Simulation Models Using Process Mining

Pourbafrani

Aalst

2022

IEEE Access

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Process mining techniques are able to describe and model real processes using historic event data extracted from the information systems of organizations. Later, these insights are used for process improvement. For instance, Discrete Event Simulation (DES) uses process models that are able to mimic real-world events. However, the aggregated performance status of processes over time reveals various hidden relationships between process variables. Coarse-grained process logs are sets of performance variables over steps of time, generated using event data from processes. The coarse-grained process logs describe processes at higher levels. System Dynamics completes process mining by capturing the relationships between various process variables at a higher level of abstraction. In this paper, we propose a new framework for capturing conceptual models of processes using transformed event data. The main idea is to automatically discover the underlying relations as equations. This allows us to generate system dynamics simulations of processes. We employ a variety of statistical and machine learning techniques to discover the hidden relationships between process variables. The framework supports the simulation modeling task in the context of system dynamics simulations. The experiments using real event logs demonstrate that our approach is able to generate valid models and capture the underlying relationships.

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Systems thinking and system dynamics: A primer

Cited by 24 publications

References 22 publications

Should doctors use their judgment? How a system dynamics model elicited knowledge in neonatal care services

Should doctors use their judgment? How a system dynamics model elicited knowledge in neonatal care services

Path and policy analyses: a sustainability study of military workforce supply chains

Discovering System Dynamics Simulation Models Using Process Mining

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