DAMAS (DAshboard MAnager System) is a large European Commission-financed research project involvi... more DAMAS (DAshboard MAnager System) is a large European Commission-financed research project involving four European development- consultancy organisations (HELP S.p.A. as the project co-ordinator and System Dynamics module developer, HVR Consulting Services Ltd. as System Dynamics module developer, K-Net S.A. as Business Object Architecture module developer and CEFRIEL as User Interface and task assistance module developer). and two Wineries (Casa Vinicola di Duca di Salaparuta- CORVO and John Boutari & Son S.A.) as user partners over which the project results are being experimented. Although the project has a very larger objectives, the paper will mainly point out results obtained in using DAMAS specifically for CORVO Management Accounting area. It will be discussed the development of the Economic and Finance model of the Wine company, through the Management Accounting area view taking in to account interactions with all main variables of other firm business areas (production,
Page 1. E-Company: A SD Model to evaluate marketing on line investment HabibSedehi Federica Bosco... more Page 1. E-Company: A SD Model to evaluate marketing on line investment HabibSedehi Federica Boscolo Nicola Vaccaro HELP SpA Via Antonio D'Achiardi, 31 00158 Rome (ITALY ) E-mail: sedehi@help.it HELP SpA Via ...
The Italian Chapter (SYDIC) of the System Dynamics Society, needed an effective tool to monitor i... more The Italian Chapter (SYDIC) of the System Dynamics Society, needed an effective tool to monitor its member activities, and to support the diffusion of the System Dynamics methodology in Italy, by encouraging the contacts between scholars, researchers and professionals making use of this discipline. Among the existing tools, we identified the web community idea as the most suitable. By carefully searching the available sources and by analysing examples of existing communities, it was possible to identify the characteristics and features of a successful community, and so to identify the main aspects and strategies to build a scientific community. It has been found that an IT-system named “groupware ” (that is, a platform to support collaborative work or CSCW – Computer Supported Cooperative Work) generally provides most of the desired features for a scientific community. Based on the main features available in a CSCW groupware, we then developed our idea of what the Italian system dyn...
DAMAS aims at building a decision support system based on the integration of legacy data reposito... more DAMAS aims at building a decision support system based on the integration of legacy data repositories and system dynamics modelling tools. The latter are used to simulate the behaviour of different business areas, such as marketing, finance, production, etc. Moreover, an enterprise-wide, company-specific model, integrating the aforementioned areas, is being built. The main target is wine production industry. Nevertheless, the DAMAS consortium is pursuing the applicability of the proposed approach to other industrial sectors. DAMAS features a business object architecture, encapsulating legacy repositories, as well as business intelligence and common functions. Managers are provided with a high-level dashboard which co-ordinates, controls and monitors the underlying business objects. 1. GENERIC PROBLEMS IN DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS Still today the majority of software systems supporting every-day work in business company, are conceptually of "metabolic" type, i.e., these syst...
For a company that is looking to engage new managers from outside or to promote from inside white... more For a company that is looking to engage new managers from outside or to promote from inside white colour personnel and to train them rapidly and efficiently is getting a crucial problem in the high level job mobility situation today present in Europe. In order to make productive, as soon as possible, new managers, specific training courses (held both in classroom and/or at distance) are filled out. A successful training path aims to achieve the following goals: − to teach quickly general base management arguments together with a systemic view of the overall company business area stimulating strategic plan definition oriented to pursue a financial and economic long-term equilibrium; − to motivate the best actions in order to keep general business management objectives within both stable and changeable organisation environment; − to promote expertise exchange process encouraging a co-operative management philosophy. In order to favour successful training process, a Co-operative Intera...
The measurement processes are becoming more and more interesting and important for ICT organisati... more The measurement processes are becoming more and more interesting and important for ICT organisations because, on one hand they feel an increasing need to measure the characteristics of their products/services and the performances of their process and on the other because of the increasing customers ’ requirements for objective and quantitative evidence of quality characteristics in the procured products/services. A further drive for measuring comes from the quality management systems (ISO 9001 family) and from the SPICE model- Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination (the ISO/IEC 15504 standard). In order to respond to these needs, the ICT organisations must define a measurement process based on models already consolidated or known in the literature or creating original models customized for their own operating context. This paper will document the measurement process defined by an ICT organisation, based on the customisation of a framework for the evaluation of sof...
In modern society, Service Systems are considered one of the most profitable assets of both Busin... more In modern society, Service Systems are considered one of the most profitable assets of both Business Companies and Public Organizations, since they can offer a highly added value for many different kind of products, both tangible and intangible. Among these Service Systems, Call Centers are considered to represent one of the most difficult cases to well understand and hence to manage. This difficulty is mainly due both to their intrinsic dynamics and to the unpredictable behaviour of input data. Furthermore, modern Call Centers tend to focus on the management of various and different types of calls, which most of the times require the government of different situations together with different agent (operator) skill management. So, in this type of scenarios, the main objective is focused on finding an efficient way to organize and manage a multi task Call Center. In this paper we will try to show how these kind of Call Centers can most efficiently be managed through a Dynamic Skill B...
Feedback is a commonly used term in both engineering and social systems. In engineering systems, ... more Feedback is a commonly used term in both engineering and social systems. In engineering systems, the concept of feedback is usually tied with control (or regulation); positive or negative feedback is often utilized to regulate the behavior of systems. In social systems, we use feedback for many purposes; regulation is one, interpretation, integration, and differentiation and learning are others. In engineering, feedback is an important part of system design. In social systems, feedback can be used as an important aspect of system design; and this is the concept we are going to explore in this paper. Before getting to the specific example, we’ll briefly explore different types of feedback, their relationship with different systems methodologies, and an overview of the Systems Dynamics methodology that has feedback loops as its building block. This background will help us examine the design thinking considerations we need to take into account when dealing with social systems.
International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, 1999
Abstract:,DAMAS aims at building a decision support system based on the integration of legacy dat... more Abstract:,DAMAS aims at building a decision support system based on the integration of legacy data repositories and system dynamics modelling tools. The latter are used to simulate the behaviour of different business areas, such as marketing, finance, production, etc. Moreover, an enterprise-wide, company-specific model, integrating the aforementioned areas, is being built. The main target is wine production industry. Nevertheless, the
In Italy there are almost 20,000 cultural towns, 40 00 castles and gardens, 3,000 museums, 10,000... more In Italy there are almost 20,000 cultural towns, 40 00 castles and gardens, 3,000 museums, 10,000 churches, 200 archaeological sites and a con siderable number of old libraries and archives. Italy owns the largest number of world he ritage (49 out of the 981 UNESCO list). These cultural resources represent an essential fac tor for the Italian tourism industry and in general for the national economic system. Italy needs to distribute over the year its tourist offer. Except for the art cities like Rome, Florence or Venice, the Italian tourism today is ma inly concentrated on the so called “beach tourism” (seaside travelling in summer time). There fo it is more and more necessary to promote cultural heritage as an essential source to attract tourists throughout the whole year rather than to focus only for the seaside beauty. Being aware of the economic importance and the comp lexity level of the cultural tourism process, recently there have been a lot of research initiatives focused on...
Pedagogical research has demonstrated that while traditional teaching methods can be useful for i... more Pedagogical research has demonstrated that while traditional teaching methods can be useful for imparting factual information ("cold knowledge"), simulations and video games are more effective in teaching decision-making processes ("warm knowledge"). Advances in video game creation allow the development of multi-agent, artificial society simulators with capabilities for modeling physiology, stress, emotion, and course-of-action decision-making. This new approach enables superior understanding of the complexity in organizations and their relevant business environments. This in turn provides an opportunity for game-play that helps promote better decision-making. System Dynamics also allows managers to make their understanding of business problems explicit and improve upon them. This occurs by modelling structures (e.g., relationships, policies, incentives, etc) that underlie behaviour of systems. While system dynamics acknowledges the critical role of personal and ...
There has been two main objectives with which the idea to write this paper was started. First of ... more There has been two main objectives with which the idea to write this paper was started. First of all, to exchange, and hence put in common, the knowledge of different experiences in Italian academic context dealing with teaching of a consolidated but still innovative (at least in Italy) methodology. Secondly, to put in evidence possible pros and cons of each teaching approach in order to better face (at least be aware of )the next teaching years (learn one from the other!) . The paper will describe four teaching experiences in four different university contexts; three are so called hard faculties (Sciences, Statistics and Engineering), and one could be considered soft faculty i.e. Communication Sciences. Two are sufficiently consolidated courses (more than five academic years) and two are less experienced (both three academic years).Three are placed in Master programme and only one (but this one is related to, maybe, the “hardest” facultyEngineering) is collocated in Bachelor progra...
Feedback is a commonly used term in both engineering and social systems. In engineering systems, ... more Feedback is a commonly used term in both engineering and social systems. In engineering systems, the concept of feedback is usually tied with control (or regulation); positive or negative feedback is often utilized to regulate the behavior of systems. In social systems, we use feedback for many purposes; regulation is one, interpretation, integration, and differentiation and learning are others. In engineering, feedback is an important part of system design. In social systems, feedback can be used as an important aspect of system design; and this is the concept we are going to explore in this paper. Before getting to the specific example, we'll briefly explore different types of feedback, their relationship with different systems methodologies, and an overview of the Systems Dynamics methodology that has feedback loops as its building block. This background will help us examine the design thinking considerations we need to take into account when dealing with social systems. Types of Feedback in Different Systems Methodologies Looking at organizations as social systems, whose components are human beings capable of making decisions in choice situations, signifies that feedback plays a key role in decision-making and specifically, in organizational learning. In consequence, sometimes organizations are regarded as systems of decision-making. Therefore, feedback is not only a feature of the social systems to be studied; but also a matter of the way in which our thinking about how those systems are organized. Social systems, at all times, are confronted with multitude of choices, but majority of these choices fall into two categories: descriptive choice (based on what is known and described by the others) and experiential choice (based on the organization's own experience). It is a well-known fact that " experience is inevitable, learning is not. " For organizational learning to take place, the social system needs to design rigorous undistorted feedback systems. Separately, Systems Thinking (ST) both as a mindset (paradigm) and the associated methodologies derived from it, is an evolving discipline. The most significant systems methodologies and their principal characteristics are outlined in the following pages. Each of these methodologies can be related to a system paradigm. Therefore, the methodologies could be better understood if the paradigms underpinning them are explained and understood. The existence of a plurality of paradigms emphasizes that multiple interpretations of reality lead to differentiated beliefs about what is held to be "true". Rather than attempting to view dogmatically one paradigm as holding the only version of "truth", and the others as being "false", we suggest that each paradigm presents its interpretation of the world from a particular perspective that captures aspects ignored by the other paradigms: a more holistic understanding is gained by taking seriously what each paradigm tells us about the world and contrasting the different perspectives gained. The significance of belief and meaning in paradigms highlights the importance of language and how we talk about the problems we have to face. Each paradigm is associated with particular stories and language. Metaphors play a crucial part in this context: metaphors are figures of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.
Page 1. E-Company: A SD Model to evaluate marketing on line investment HabibSedehi Federica Bosco... more Page 1. E-Company: A SD Model to evaluate marketing on line investment HabibSedehi Federica Boscolo Nicola Vaccaro HELP SpA Via Antonio D'Achiardi, 31 00158 Rome (ITALY ) E-mail: sedehi@help.it HELP SpA Via ...
DAMAS (DAshboard MAnager System) is a large European Commission-financed research project involvi... more DAMAS (DAshboard MAnager System) is a large European Commission-financed research project involving four European development- consultancy organisations (HELP S.p.A. as the project co-ordinator and System Dynamics module developer, HVR Consulting Services Ltd. as System Dynamics module developer, K-Net S.A. as Business Object Architecture module developer and CEFRIEL as User Interface and task assistance module developer). and two Wineries (Casa Vinicola di Duca di Salaparuta- CORVO and John Boutari & Son S.A.) as user partners over which the project results are being experimented. Although the project has a very larger objectives, the paper will mainly point out results obtained in using DAMAS specifically for CORVO Management Accounting area. It will be discussed the development of the Economic and Finance model of the Wine company, through the Management Accounting area view taking in to account interactions with all main variables of other firm business areas (production,
Page 1. E-Company: A SD Model to evaluate marketing on line investment HabibSedehi Federica Bosco... more Page 1. E-Company: A SD Model to evaluate marketing on line investment HabibSedehi Federica Boscolo Nicola Vaccaro HELP SpA Via Antonio D'Achiardi, 31 00158 Rome (ITALY ) E-mail: sedehi@help.it HELP SpA Via ...
The Italian Chapter (SYDIC) of the System Dynamics Society, needed an effective tool to monitor i... more The Italian Chapter (SYDIC) of the System Dynamics Society, needed an effective tool to monitor its member activities, and to support the diffusion of the System Dynamics methodology in Italy, by encouraging the contacts between scholars, researchers and professionals making use of this discipline. Among the existing tools, we identified the web community idea as the most suitable. By carefully searching the available sources and by analysing examples of existing communities, it was possible to identify the characteristics and features of a successful community, and so to identify the main aspects and strategies to build a scientific community. It has been found that an IT-system named “groupware ” (that is, a platform to support collaborative work or CSCW – Computer Supported Cooperative Work) generally provides most of the desired features for a scientific community. Based on the main features available in a CSCW groupware, we then developed our idea of what the Italian system dyn...
DAMAS aims at building a decision support system based on the integration of legacy data reposito... more DAMAS aims at building a decision support system based on the integration of legacy data repositories and system dynamics modelling tools. The latter are used to simulate the behaviour of different business areas, such as marketing, finance, production, etc. Moreover, an enterprise-wide, company-specific model, integrating the aforementioned areas, is being built. The main target is wine production industry. Nevertheless, the DAMAS consortium is pursuing the applicability of the proposed approach to other industrial sectors. DAMAS features a business object architecture, encapsulating legacy repositories, as well as business intelligence and common functions. Managers are provided with a high-level dashboard which co-ordinates, controls and monitors the underlying business objects. 1. GENERIC PROBLEMS IN DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS Still today the majority of software systems supporting every-day work in business company, are conceptually of "metabolic" type, i.e., these syst...
For a company that is looking to engage new managers from outside or to promote from inside white... more For a company that is looking to engage new managers from outside or to promote from inside white colour personnel and to train them rapidly and efficiently is getting a crucial problem in the high level job mobility situation today present in Europe. In order to make productive, as soon as possible, new managers, specific training courses (held both in classroom and/or at distance) are filled out. A successful training path aims to achieve the following goals: − to teach quickly general base management arguments together with a systemic view of the overall company business area stimulating strategic plan definition oriented to pursue a financial and economic long-term equilibrium; − to motivate the best actions in order to keep general business management objectives within both stable and changeable organisation environment; − to promote expertise exchange process encouraging a co-operative management philosophy. In order to favour successful training process, a Co-operative Intera...
The measurement processes are becoming more and more interesting and important for ICT organisati... more The measurement processes are becoming more and more interesting and important for ICT organisations because, on one hand they feel an increasing need to measure the characteristics of their products/services and the performances of their process and on the other because of the increasing customers ’ requirements for objective and quantitative evidence of quality characteristics in the procured products/services. A further drive for measuring comes from the quality management systems (ISO 9001 family) and from the SPICE model- Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination (the ISO/IEC 15504 standard). In order to respond to these needs, the ICT organisations must define a measurement process based on models already consolidated or known in the literature or creating original models customized for their own operating context. This paper will document the measurement process defined by an ICT organisation, based on the customisation of a framework for the evaluation of sof...
In modern society, Service Systems are considered one of the most profitable assets of both Busin... more In modern society, Service Systems are considered one of the most profitable assets of both Business Companies and Public Organizations, since they can offer a highly added value for many different kind of products, both tangible and intangible. Among these Service Systems, Call Centers are considered to represent one of the most difficult cases to well understand and hence to manage. This difficulty is mainly due both to their intrinsic dynamics and to the unpredictable behaviour of input data. Furthermore, modern Call Centers tend to focus on the management of various and different types of calls, which most of the times require the government of different situations together with different agent (operator) skill management. So, in this type of scenarios, the main objective is focused on finding an efficient way to organize and manage a multi task Call Center. In this paper we will try to show how these kind of Call Centers can most efficiently be managed through a Dynamic Skill B...
Feedback is a commonly used term in both engineering and social systems. In engineering systems, ... more Feedback is a commonly used term in both engineering and social systems. In engineering systems, the concept of feedback is usually tied with control (or regulation); positive or negative feedback is often utilized to regulate the behavior of systems. In social systems, we use feedback for many purposes; regulation is one, interpretation, integration, and differentiation and learning are others. In engineering, feedback is an important part of system design. In social systems, feedback can be used as an important aspect of system design; and this is the concept we are going to explore in this paper. Before getting to the specific example, we’ll briefly explore different types of feedback, their relationship with different systems methodologies, and an overview of the Systems Dynamics methodology that has feedback loops as its building block. This background will help us examine the design thinking considerations we need to take into account when dealing with social systems.
International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, 1999
Abstract:,DAMAS aims at building a decision support system based on the integration of legacy dat... more Abstract:,DAMAS aims at building a decision support system based on the integration of legacy data repositories and system dynamics modelling tools. The latter are used to simulate the behaviour of different business areas, such as marketing, finance, production, etc. Moreover, an enterprise-wide, company-specific model, integrating the aforementioned areas, is being built. The main target is wine production industry. Nevertheless, the
In Italy there are almost 20,000 cultural towns, 40 00 castles and gardens, 3,000 museums, 10,000... more In Italy there are almost 20,000 cultural towns, 40 00 castles and gardens, 3,000 museums, 10,000 churches, 200 archaeological sites and a con siderable number of old libraries and archives. Italy owns the largest number of world he ritage (49 out of the 981 UNESCO list). These cultural resources represent an essential fac tor for the Italian tourism industry and in general for the national economic system. Italy needs to distribute over the year its tourist offer. Except for the art cities like Rome, Florence or Venice, the Italian tourism today is ma inly concentrated on the so called “beach tourism” (seaside travelling in summer time). There fo it is more and more necessary to promote cultural heritage as an essential source to attract tourists throughout the whole year rather than to focus only for the seaside beauty. Being aware of the economic importance and the comp lexity level of the cultural tourism process, recently there have been a lot of research initiatives focused on...
Pedagogical research has demonstrated that while traditional teaching methods can be useful for i... more Pedagogical research has demonstrated that while traditional teaching methods can be useful for imparting factual information ("cold knowledge"), simulations and video games are more effective in teaching decision-making processes ("warm knowledge"). Advances in video game creation allow the development of multi-agent, artificial society simulators with capabilities for modeling physiology, stress, emotion, and course-of-action decision-making. This new approach enables superior understanding of the complexity in organizations and their relevant business environments. This in turn provides an opportunity for game-play that helps promote better decision-making. System Dynamics also allows managers to make their understanding of business problems explicit and improve upon them. This occurs by modelling structures (e.g., relationships, policies, incentives, etc) that underlie behaviour of systems. While system dynamics acknowledges the critical role of personal and ...
There has been two main objectives with which the idea to write this paper was started. First of ... more There has been two main objectives with which the idea to write this paper was started. First of all, to exchange, and hence put in common, the knowledge of different experiences in Italian academic context dealing with teaching of a consolidated but still innovative (at least in Italy) methodology. Secondly, to put in evidence possible pros and cons of each teaching approach in order to better face (at least be aware of )the next teaching years (learn one from the other!) . The paper will describe four teaching experiences in four different university contexts; three are so called hard faculties (Sciences, Statistics and Engineering), and one could be considered soft faculty i.e. Communication Sciences. Two are sufficiently consolidated courses (more than five academic years) and two are less experienced (both three academic years).Three are placed in Master programme and only one (but this one is related to, maybe, the “hardest” facultyEngineering) is collocated in Bachelor progra...
Feedback is a commonly used term in both engineering and social systems. In engineering systems, ... more Feedback is a commonly used term in both engineering and social systems. In engineering systems, the concept of feedback is usually tied with control (or regulation); positive or negative feedback is often utilized to regulate the behavior of systems. In social systems, we use feedback for many purposes; regulation is one, interpretation, integration, and differentiation and learning are others. In engineering, feedback is an important part of system design. In social systems, feedback can be used as an important aspect of system design; and this is the concept we are going to explore in this paper. Before getting to the specific example, we'll briefly explore different types of feedback, their relationship with different systems methodologies, and an overview of the Systems Dynamics methodology that has feedback loops as its building block. This background will help us examine the design thinking considerations we need to take into account when dealing with social systems. Types of Feedback in Different Systems Methodologies Looking at organizations as social systems, whose components are human beings capable of making decisions in choice situations, signifies that feedback plays a key role in decision-making and specifically, in organizational learning. In consequence, sometimes organizations are regarded as systems of decision-making. Therefore, feedback is not only a feature of the social systems to be studied; but also a matter of the way in which our thinking about how those systems are organized. Social systems, at all times, are confronted with multitude of choices, but majority of these choices fall into two categories: descriptive choice (based on what is known and described by the others) and experiential choice (based on the organization's own experience). It is a well-known fact that " experience is inevitable, learning is not. " For organizational learning to take place, the social system needs to design rigorous undistorted feedback systems. Separately, Systems Thinking (ST) both as a mindset (paradigm) and the associated methodologies derived from it, is an evolving discipline. The most significant systems methodologies and their principal characteristics are outlined in the following pages. Each of these methodologies can be related to a system paradigm. Therefore, the methodologies could be better understood if the paradigms underpinning them are explained and understood. The existence of a plurality of paradigms emphasizes that multiple interpretations of reality lead to differentiated beliefs about what is held to be "true". Rather than attempting to view dogmatically one paradigm as holding the only version of "truth", and the others as being "false", we suggest that each paradigm presents its interpretation of the world from a particular perspective that captures aspects ignored by the other paradigms: a more holistic understanding is gained by taking seriously what each paradigm tells us about the world and contrasting the different perspectives gained. The significance of belief and meaning in paradigms highlights the importance of language and how we talk about the problems we have to face. Each paradigm is associated with particular stories and language. Metaphors play a crucial part in this context: metaphors are figures of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.
Page 1. E-Company: A SD Model to evaluate marketing on line investment HabibSedehi Federica Bosco... more Page 1. E-Company: A SD Model to evaluate marketing on line investment HabibSedehi Federica Boscolo Nicola Vaccaro HELP SpA Via Antonio D'Achiardi, 31 00158 Rome (ITALY ) E-mail: sedehi@help.it HELP SpA Via ...
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