to Steve Gildersleeve,
I and colleagues in the manufacturing engineering group in Cambridge have
been working on measuring the complexity of systems that process some
physical entity (as opposed to information),particularly manufacturing
processes.
We have developed a model which makes the following predictions about such
systems;
1. There are two sources of complexity, a structural and an operational.
2. The impact of complexity on such systems is to increase the processing
time and to make the systems less reliable.
3. The most complex processes are the bottlenecks in the system.
4. If you wish to measure such systems you must look primarily at queuing
behaviour.
5. Entropy is an appropriate measure.
We have now tested the ideas in four companies all of which reported
positive results, including one which included a distribution element
based in Germany but European wide. It has attracted interest in the trade
press and, so far three publications have written articles. In one, the
reporter visited one of the companies which reported an improvement in due
date performance from 60% to 90%.
We only concern ourselves with stationery or near stationery systems, so
we are not looking at chaotic systems.
We have presented an academic paper at a workshop held in the University
of Strasbourg and have a second being published shortly in the
International Journal of Operations and Production Management. We have
also entered into a commercial agreement with CSC for worldwide
exploitation.
Hope that this is of some interest.
Gerry Frizelle
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From: gdmf@eng.cam.ac.uk (Gerry Frizelle)