If you think the complexity of the current situation – pandemic, global warming, and race relations – is overwhelming, I have a suggestion for coping with the complexity. The just published issue of The Bridge (https://www.nae.edu/Bridge.aspx) provides a wonderfully broad and intriguing set of perspectives of how complexity is manifested throughout our society. We cannot […]
We are trying our best to physically distance ourselves from risks of the coronavirus. Along with washing hands and not touching your face, this practice seems to make much sense. Everyone I know seems to be doing these things. However, the phrase “social distancing” got me thinking. Most of us have been social distancing for […]
Within much of engineering, and particularly, operations research, the goal is often the “best” decision that maximizes or minimizes a well-defined criterion or objective function. One can then, for example, employ mathematical programming to calculate the lowest cost routes for delivery trucks. Often one can even mathematically prove that these routes are best. Over the […]
The organizers of the 3rd International Symposium on Engineering Systems asked me to provide a brief story of my journey to engineering systems — how I came to be at this Symposium on this June evening in Delft. The idea is to stimulate your thinking and perhaps motivate you to share your stories during dinner […]
So, the game plan, according to me, is to create the future. Who is on the team? You might think, based on my last post, that the team is all engineers and scientists. But, that is not how it has worked in the past. Regardless of the technology — steamboats to automobiles to computers — […]
I am a student of history, particularly economic history. Lately, I have been immersed in reading about technological innovation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Transportation was transformed from stagecoaches and steamboats to railroads, automobiles and airplanes. Electricity transformed communications from mail, telegraph and telephone to radio, television and now Internet. In the […]
Much of contemporary analytics focuses on tabulating and portraying characteristics of existing systems, whether they are for energy supply, health delivery or a wide range of other complex systems. This type of analytics addresses “what is” or in many cases “what was.” This approach is backward looking, which makes a lot of sense if there […]
I am in Beijing and Shanghai for a few days. The reason for my being in China is to chair the International Review Board at Tsinghua University where we are reviewing the Department of Industrial Engineering. The basic statistics are chilling. In the U.S., 4% of undergraduates matriculate in engineering. Of those that graduate, 12% […]
I am pleased to report that IOS Press released “Engineering the System of Healthcare Delivery” this week in Amsterdam. Denis Cortese and I edited this 500-page compendium of the insights and ideas of a wide range of luminaries in healthcare. Our goal was to bring together in one place the thought leaders who are transforming […]
