REPLY Renaming System Dynamics (SD6380)

[SDMAIL Bill Braun]

Posted by  Bill Braun <bbraun at hlthsys.com>

I'm not in favor of a name change for reasons already cited by others. 
Not withstanding, at work I do find that when I am in a position to 
propose some SD work and refer to it as a "systems dynamics modeling, 
the continuous flow approach", most people seem to instinctively know 
what the "continuous flow" part means, even if they cannot visualize 
what such a model looks like or would do. That puts the listener in a 
receptive mood, and I can offer some details of how and why the 
modeling might help.

I work in a hospital system. With the above introduction and overview 
description of SD, even when I note that the model will not be useful 
for what is happening in bed M050-04 but will give a nice picture of 
the overall inflow and outflow of patients on the unit M050, for most
 of the problems we have, that seems to capture their attention.

Rather than focusing on renaming SD, is there a useful conversation 
on how we describe SD in the first 30 seconds?
Posted by  Bill Braun <bbraun at hlthsys.com>
posting date  Thu, 05 Apr 2007 07:10:48 -0400