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The manufacturing lines would be designed, and they'd be designed in an attempt to affect the "design" of the ultimate resulting supply chain they're a part of. But the relationship between the design of some lines and the behavior of the larger supply chain is non-linear, hard to predict, and ultimately undesigned, and therefore complex.

The design of the manufacturing lines and the resulting supply chain are not independent of each other -- you can trace features from one to the other -- but you cannot take apart the supply chain and analyze the designs of its constituent manufacturing lines and actually predict the behavior of the larger system.

AFAIK there's not a great definition of a complex system, just a set of traits that tend to indicate you're looking at one. Non-linearity, feedbacks, lack of predictability, resistance to analysis (the "you can't take it apart to reason about the whole" characteristic mentioned above"). All of these traits are also kind of the same things... they tend to come bundled with one another.

by marcosdumay7 hours ago|

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A complex system is one that has chaotic behavior.

(And no, this is not "my" definition, it's how it's defined in the systems-related disciplines.)

by ted_bunny4 hours ago|

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What's considered chaotic? Multiple causes, hard to track?

by jandrewrogers3 hours ago|

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Consider systems that require continuous active stabilization to not fail because the system has no naturally stable equilibrium state even in theory. Some of our most sophisticated engineering systems have this property e.g. the flight control systems that allow a B-2 bomber to fly. In a software context you see these kinds of design problems in large-scale data infrastructure systems.

The set of system designs that exhibit naturally stable behavior doesn't overlap much with the set of system designs that deliver maximum performance and efficiency. The capability gap between the two can be large but most people choose easy/simple.

There is an enormous amount of low-hanging opportunity here but most people, including engineers, struggle with systems thinking.