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The System Dynamics (SD) methodology is a framework for modeling and simulating the dynamic behavior of socioeconomic systems. Characteristic for the description of such systems is the occurrence of feedback loops together with stocks and flows. The mathematical equations that describe the system are usually ordinary differential equations and nonlinear algebraic constraints. Therefore seemingly simple systems can show a nonintuitive, unpredictable behavior over time. Controlling a dynamical system means to specify potential interventions from outside that should keep the system on the desired track, and to define an evaluation schema to compare different controls among each other, so that a "best" control can be defined in a meaningful way. The central question is how to compute such globally optimal control for a given SD model, that allows the transition of the system into a desired state with minimum effort. We propose a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) reformulation of the System Dynamics Optimization (SDO) problem. MINLP problems can be solved by linear programming based branch-and-bound approach. We demonstrate that standard MINLP solvers are not able to solve SDO problem. To overcome this obstacle, we introduce a special-tailored bound propagation method. We apply our new method to a predator-prey model with additional hunting activity as control, and to a mini-world model with the consumption level as control. Numerical results for these test cases are presented.
It is clear that a transformation to sustainable value creation is needed, because business as usual is not an option for preserving competitive advantages of leading industries. What does that mean? This contribution proposes possible approaches for a shift in existing manufacturing paradigms. In a first step, sustainability aspects from the German Sustainability Strategy and from the tools of life cycle sustainability assessment are chosen to match areas of a value creation process. Within these aspects are indicators, which can be measured within a manufacturing process. Once these data are obtained they can be used to set up a mathematical linear pulse model of manufacturing in order to analyse the evolution of the system over time, that is the transition process, by using a system dynamics approach. An increase of technology development by a factor of 2 leads to an increase of manufacturing but also to an increase of climate change. Compensation measures need to be taken. This can be done by e.g. taking money from the GDP (as an indicator of the aspect ``macroeconomic performance''). The value of the arc from that building block towards climate change must then be increased by a factor of 10. The choice of independent and representative indicators or aspects shall be validated and double-checked for their significance with the help of multi-criteria mixed-integer programming optimisation methods.
Identification of trade-offs for sustainable manufacturing of a Bamboo Bike by System Dynamics
(2013)
We develop a generic System Dynamic model to simulate the production, machines, employees, waste, and capital flows of a manufacturing company. In a second step, this model is specialised by defining suit-able input data to represent a bicycle manufacturing company in a developing country. We monitor a set of sustainability indicators to understand the social, environmental and economic impact of the company, and to estimate managerial decisions to be taken in order to improve on these criteria. We show that the social and environmental situation can be improved over time without sacrificing the economic success of the company's business.
We study System Dynamics models with several free parameters that can be altered by the user. We assume that the user's goal is to achieve a certain dynamic behavior of the model by varying these parameters. In order to the find best possible combination of parameter settings, several automatic parameter tuning methods are described in the literature and readily available within existing System Dynamic software packages. We give a survey on the available techniques in the market and describe their theoretical background. Some of these methods are already six decades old, and meanwhile newer and more powerful optimization methods have emerged in the mathematical literature. One major obstacle for their direct use are tabled data in System Dynamics models, which are usually interpreted as piecewise linear functions. However, modern optimization methods usually require smooth functions which are twice continuously differentiable. We overcome this problem by a smooth spline interpolation of the tabled data. We use a test set of three complex System Dynamic models from the literature, describe their individual transition into optimization problems, and demonstrate the applicability of modern optimization algorithms to these System Dynamics Optimization problems.