I think we should question our attitudes - closed systems/engineering bad, open systems/nature good. These are neither a pervasive distinction nor a context free definition.
The great thing about engineering/closed systems is the ability to 'control' of the yield, the great thing about an open system is adaptation and evolution. Nature is wonderful but hopelessly low yield.
It is a wise strategy, where possible, to partition and contain part of the situation so that it can be legitimately treated as a closed system. Life then is much simpler and the yield can be managed within the demand/resource envelope.
Of course it is a foolhardy strategy to treat an open system with the principles of and thinking behind a closed system.
Front-loading our thinking by an unnecessary dichotomy balkanises the options for progress and excludes valuable and productive design space from your repertoire of options.
Hi Luke, ....All systems are open systems? Yes and no. Take for example the Toyota Production system. Yes this does interact with "external environment" and Toyota (structurally related). However it is essentially a closed deterministic systems work dealing with predefined inputs, outputs and control mechanisms. TPS is also constrained by the embedded production assets and current control mechanism (operational policies, procedures, methods and engineering standards). POSIWID applies. It can only produced, eg, red, blue and green cars. It cannot deal with as current configured to deal with an input of paper to output paper cars. In other words it is not adaptable unless the means of production is changed - a few $m. Comments/thoughts? Regards Geoff Elliott
PS member of a small group - meeting of minds on linkedin with Profs mike jackson, victor Newman, roger James. Members in Oz, Switzerland and Germany focussed at putting some sense into ST and challenging the many instant gurus
I think we should question our attitudes - closed systems/engineering bad, open systems/nature good. These are neither a pervasive distinction nor a context free definition.
The great thing about engineering/closed systems is the ability to 'control' of the yield, the great thing about an open system is adaptation and evolution. Nature is wonderful but hopelessly low yield.
It is a wise strategy, where possible, to partition and contain part of the situation so that it can be legitimately treated as a closed system. Life then is much simpler and the yield can be managed within the demand/resource envelope.
Of course it is a foolhardy strategy to treat an open system with the principles of and thinking behind a closed system.
Front-loading our thinking by an unnecessary dichotomy balkanises the options for progress and excludes valuable and productive design space from your repertoire of options.
Hi Luke, ....All systems are open systems? Yes and no. Take for example the Toyota Production system. Yes this does interact with "external environment" and Toyota (structurally related). However it is essentially a closed deterministic systems work dealing with predefined inputs, outputs and control mechanisms. TPS is also constrained by the embedded production assets and current control mechanism (operational policies, procedures, methods and engineering standards). POSIWID applies. It can only produced, eg, red, blue and green cars. It cannot deal with as current configured to deal with an input of paper to output paper cars. In other words it is not adaptable unless the means of production is changed - a few $m. Comments/thoughts? Regards Geoff Elliott
geoff.elliott2@btopenworld.com
PS member of a small group - meeting of minds on linkedin with Profs mike jackson, victor Newman, roger James. Members in Oz, Switzerland and Germany focussed at putting some sense into ST and challenging the many instant gurus