LEARNING OUTCOMES

1. Critical awareness of the concept of decision support and its effects on all parts of an organisation

2. Critical understanding of modelling and simulation

And the ability to:

3. Effectively use various decision support tools and techniques

4. Critically evaluate a range of decision making tools and techniques in relation to their application in a variety of contexts

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

You are required to submit your work within the bounds of the University Infringement of Assessment Regulations (see your Programme Guide). Plagiarism, paraphrasing and downloading large amounts of information from external sources, will not be tolerated and will be dealt with severely. Although you should make full use of any source material, which would normally be an occasional sentence and/or paragraph (referenced) followed by your own critical analysis/evaluation. You will receive no marks for work that is not your own. Your work may be subject to checks for originality which can include use of an electronic plagiarism detection service.

Where you are asked to submit an individual piece of work, the work must be entirely your own. The safety of your assessments is your responsibility. You must not permit another student access to your work.

Where referencing is required, unless otherwise stated, the Harvard referencing system must be used (see your Programme Guide).

The assignment is based on individual work by each student.

General System Scenario

You need to develop and consider your OWN general system scenario. Select a particular type of system. The system could have a number of decision problems. You need to identify TWO problems: a problem that requires the construction of an analytical model and a problem that requires the construction of a simulation model. Formulate these TWO problems in words.

Note that you need to structure and model a real decision problem.

You need to address all tasks identified in the following section.

Key Tasks

You need to produce a type written report which should contain the following:

Task 1: Use a general system scenario as a generic description of a type of real system. Add details to the general system scenario in relation to the problems that require the construction of analytical and simulation models. Produce a description of your specific scenarios in relation to each problem and aim. Write a paragraph explaining the problems you have been set. Write about the kind of questions that you are going to answer - be explicit. Write a succinct statement for each problem.

You need to provide:

- Clear explanation of a rationale of the application of the System Dynamics method to the selected problem
- Description and representation of basic concepts in relation to the selected problem
- Clear explanation of key aspects of System Dynamics modelling
- Representation of the System Dynamics diagrams
- Critical discussions of the application of the System Dynamics method to the selected problem

Task 2: Use the model-building process discussed in lectures to analyse your scenario and problems to be solved. Using the process you need to

- identify the decision variables
- formulate the objective function/aim(s)
- formulate the constraint set
- formulate the assumption set before formulating the models.

Task 3: Construct the simple analytical model

Task 4: Analyse and solve the simple analytical model

Task 5: Critically evaluate the simple analytical model Task 6: Construct the revised analytical model and solution

Task 7: Critically evaluate the revised analytical model

Task 8: Construct the simulation model

Task 9: Critically evaluate the simulation model

Task 10: Produce a conclusion which briefly summarises the overall discussions.