M. Pidd

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Papers by M. Pidd

Using MENTOR to Teach Systems Thinking and OR Methodology to First-Year Students in New Zealand

The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2000

ABSTRACT

A critical assessment of performance measurement for policy making

Measuring the Performance of Public Services

Measuring the performance of public agencies and programmes is essential to ensure that citizens ... more Measuring the performance of public agencies and programmes is essential to ensure that citizens enjoy quality services and that governments can be sure that taxpayers receive value for money. As such, good performance measurement is a crucial component of improvement and planning, monitoring and control, comparison and benchmarking and also ensures democratic accountability. This book shows how the principles, uses and practice of performance measurement for public services differ from those in for-profit organisations, being based on the need to add public value rather than profit. It describes methods and approaches for measuring performance through time, for constructing and using scorecards, composite indicators, the use of league tables and rankings and argues that data-envelopment analysis is a useful tool when thinking about performance. This demonstrates the importance of allowing for the multidimensional nature of performance, as well as the need to base measurement on a s...

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Why modelling and model use matter

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2009

... The computational power of the model may help to reduce the complexity faced by the people ta... more

System Dynamics Modelling: A Practical Approach

The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1997

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Modelling Career Development Schemes in the European Commission

The European Commission employs over 22,000 officials who see to the administration of the Europe... more The European Commission employs over 22,000 officials who see to the administration of the European Union. In 2003 the Commission introduced a performance appraisal and promotion system based on points earned each year. After about five years of operation it became clear that this system was not satisfactory and needed to be revised. A team from Lancaster University worked closely with Commission officials to develop a simulation model, which is used to demonstrate the performance of the current system and to show how alternative systems might function. As a consequence, the various stakeholders in the Commission's performance appraisal and promotions system have agreed to implement an improved system in 2009. The simulation model is unusual in the field of manpower planning because of the requirement to model the consequences of appraisal system rules. It also uses novel regression-based sampling schemes which prove to be both accurate and efficient. Finally the role of the model in scenario exploration and system redesign is discussed.

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Implementing a layered system for discrete computer simulation

Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics, 1999

A successful simulation still requires the user to have good simulation knowledge and well develo... more A successful simulation still requires the user to have good simulation knowledge and well developed modeling skills despite a large number of simulation software products available to users. This paper presents the design principles and implementation of a layered modeling system known as General-Purpose user-defined Modeling System (GPMS) which provides the user with multiple accesses to build a simulation model at three different levels of knowledge and skills. It does this by purpose-designed GPMS simulation language, which is briefly described in this paper.

Pictures from an exhibition: images of operational research

Perversity in public sector performance measurement

Performance analysis of automatic lookahead generation by control flow graph: some experiments

Simulation Practice and Theory, 2001

The performance of parallel discrete event models is highly dependent on lookahead, particularly ... more The performance of parallel discrete event models is highly dependent on lookahead, particularly when a conservative algorithm is employed. Unfortunately lookahead is known to be problem-dependent, which restricts the implementations of conservative algorithms. This paper uses a simple queuing network to show how this lookahead aects performance and discusses various techniques for automatic generation of lookahead using control¯ow graphs (CFGs). These methods are tested on the queuing network simulation running on a CRAY T3E 1200E. Results indicate that the automatic lookahead techniques, though requiring some time to compute, perform as well as the best manually extracted lookahead injected into the parallel program.

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Object-Orientation, Discrete Simulation and the Three-Phase Approach

The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1995

The three-phase approach provides a simple and robust way to develop discrete computer simulation... more The three-phase approach provides a simple and robust way to develop discrete computer simulation programs. Object-orientation allows system developers to develop software which can be extended and also makes it impossible for important variables within a software system to be tampered with. This paper shows how the two approaches can be usefully combined and discusses the development of a simulation library, written in C++ and based on these ideas. Limitations of both approaches are also discussed.

Innovative research in OR/MS?

European Journal of Operational Research, 2001

This paper is a contribution to the continuing debate about research priorities and publications ... more This paper is a contribution to the continuing debate about research priorities and publications in OR/MS. It categorises research publications in several dierent ways. First it uses approaches suggested in the information systems and operations management literature. It then takes previous examinations of leading OR/MS journals to gain a dierent perspective on the same issues. Finally, it uses a multi-faceted view of OR/MS to try to capture its full richness. These analyses con®rm the view that much published research in OR is unengaged and focuses on decision mathematics or optimisation, apparently for its own sake. That is, most papers published in the leading OR/MS journals take little or no account of how their ®ndings might be used in practice, nor do they express much concern about this issue. The reasons for this state of aairs are discussed, so as to consider whether a change might be overdue.

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Reusing simulation components: simulation software and model reuse: a polemic

Proceedings of the 34th conference on Winter …, 2002

... The functions that we reuse in this way are usually very specific in their functionality and ... more

Contemporary OR/MS in strategy development and policy-making: some reflections

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2004

It is now widely accepted that strategy-making and policy development require both rational analy... more It is now widely accepted that strategy-making and policy development require both rational analysis and an ability to work with insights that are sometimes hard to pin down. Can operational research (OR) contribute to this process in which soft and hard are interwoven? Simon's longstanding distinction between substantive and procedural rationality is helpful in addressing this question. Undoubtedly, OR has made major contributions to strategy development, although there has been a marked tendency to argue for even greater use of substantive rationality. In addition, some soft OR methods are also successfully used in strategy development as ways to provide procedural rationality. Add to this the suggestion of Sagasti that metaphor and language are powerful tools in strategizing, then there is a powerful case for the greater use of OR/management science is strategy development and policy-making.

Simulation Software: Not the Same Yesterday, Today or Forever

It is probably true, at least in part, that each generation assumes that the way it operates is t... more It is probably true, at least in part, that each generation assumes that the way it operates is the only way to go about things. It is easy to forget that different approaches were used in the past and hard to imagine what other approaches might be used in the future. We consider the symbiotic relationship between general developments in computing, especially in software and parallel developments in discrete event simulation. This shows that approaches other than today’s excellent simulation packages were used in the past, albeit with difficulty, to conduct useful simulations. Given that few current simulation packages make much use of recent developments in computer software, particularly in component-based developments, we consider how simulation software might develop if it utilized these developments. We present a brief description of DotNetSim, a prototype component-based discrete event simulation package to illustrate our argument.

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Simulation in Pascal

Service quality in the management of simulation projects

Proceedings of the 27th conference on Winter simulation - WSC '95, 1995

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Organising insights into simulation practice

2007 Winter Simulation Conference, 2007

Developments in simulation methodology have been so successful that simulation methods are used i... more Developments in simulation methodology have been so successful that simulation methods are used in many different domains, and many of these applications are based on discrete event simulation. Though many regard simulation modelling as an art, it ought to be possible to provide guidelines for the development of successful simulation applications. It is clear, though, that such guidelines must reflect the diversity of applications. We explore that diversity and comment on its effects.

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Simulation modelling is 50! Do we need a reality check?

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2009

Simulation modelling is a fascinating research field. The techniques and tools of simulation mode... more Simulation modelling is a fascinating research field. The techniques and tools of simulation modelling have been used to research and investigate the behaviour of various systems in a wide range of areas such as commerce, computer networks, defence, health, manufacturing and transportation. Indeed, the study of the use of these techniques and tools, and the development of new forms of these, are a rich source of research in their own right. Simulation modelling is about to reach the 50th anniversary of the development of GSP (General Simulation Program), the first simulation modelling language (Tocher and Owen, 1960). There have been several historical accounts of simulation modelling research. To complement these, we have performed a review of the recent history of simulation modelling. This study targeted three leading journals dedicated to this field. These are the ACM Transactions of Modeling and Computer Simulation, Simulation: Transactions of The Society for Modeling and Simulation International and Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory (formerly Simulation Practice and Theory). The study covered the first 6 years of this century (2000-2005) and included 576 papers. The key observation of this work was the relative lack of 'real world' involvement in simulation modelling research and an even greater lack of evidence of 'real world' benefit, arguably very alarming outcomes for an applied field. To further investigate this observation two additional surveys were carried out, one to study if real world papers appeared in the more widely known OR/MS literature (837 papers in 12 journals) and one to study if such papers appeared in Manufacturing and Logistics, an application area closely associated with simulation modelling (1077 papers in 10 journals). The results of these surveys confirmed our observations. We ask if this is the natural evolution of a field that has existed for half a century or an indication of a worrying problem? This paper reports on our findings and discusses whether or not simulation modelling research urgently needs to face a 'reality check.'

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Using Java to Develop Discrete Event Simulations

The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2000

The rapid development of the Internet and the introduction of Java as a programming language prov... more The rapid development of the Internet and the introduction of Java as a programming language provide new possibilities for discrete event simulations. This paper surveys some of these developments and discusses the aspects of Java that make it attractive for developing such simulations. It then describes the development of two simulation systems in Java, one a straightforward application of the three-phase approach and the other a system that supports distributed client-server applications. The limitations and advantages of using Java in this way are discussed.

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