Promoting the study and use of system dynamics1 to improve our ability to steward our businesses, and the other enterprises in which we choose to participate.
To increase the ability of business firms to find lasting solutions to dynamically complex business problems.
StewardshipModeling.com (SM.com) offers on-site project-based system dynamics2 education for all types of business firms, process, manufacturing, assembly, software, service, consulting, etc..
As the mechanism for studying system dynamics3, SM.com's education process uses projects taken from important real-life problems selected by the client firm as critical to its business performance. Thus, in the process of learning system dynamics4, business-people taking the course improve their thinking about the root causes of an important business problem in their firm. Business people taking the course do not shift the responsibility of solving their problems to a consultant; rather, with SM.com's help, the business people are responsible for solving their own problems using the system dynamics skills they are learning. SM.com is a training firm, not a consulting firm.
In the process of learning system dynamics using SM.com's education process, business people will improve both:
their thinking about the important business problem that serves as their mechanism for learning system dynamics, and
their individual and group capacity to solve other dynamic business problems in the future.
System dynamics is suitable for a certain types of problems. Some examples of the kinds of dynamic problems that system dynamics can help business firms address are revealed in some of the chapter titles from the textbook entitled Corporate Planning and Policy Design:
Part II. Dynamics of Production and Employment Instability
Chapter 4. Dynamics of Inventory Systems
Chapter 5. Using Forecasts in Decision Making
Chapter 6. Dynamics Created by Interactions with Company Suppliers
Chapter 7. Dynamics Created by Interactions with Labor
Chapter 8. Dynamics Created by Interactions with Customers and
Competitors
Chapter 9. Using a Model to Evaluate Financial Performance
Chapter 10. Dynamics Created by Financial Control
Part III. Dynamics of Corporate Growth
Chapter 11. Dynamics Created by Capacity Expansion
Chapter 12. Dynamics Created by Financial Constraints
Chapter 13. Dynamics Created by Professional Resource Expansion
Additional examples are found in the System Dynamics applications in Business and the System dynamics and leadership and System dynamics and management links at left.
SM.com's education offerings help business people appreciate and use the system dynamics problem modeling process. At SM.com, we believe everyone in the firm should develop skills in the first two steps of the five-step process - articulating problems and forming dynamic hypotheses. These two skills alone will improve everyone's thinking about business problems, thereby improving the solutions beyond what is possible in the absence of such education.
However, finding the root causes of dynamically complex problems, and solutions to those problems that will overcome policy resistance, are tricky so everyone should also develop an appreciation of the importance of system dynamics simulation modeling for dynamically complex problems to the extent that they expect and even demand it. A few people in most firms will become interested in learning to build, test, and design policies using system dynamics simulation models, thereby creating immense capacity within the firm to deal with dynamically complex problems.
Lyneis, Jim (1980) Corporate Planning and Policy Design, Waltham, MA: Pegasus Communications