Workshop Industry
Industry facing the complexity
Fri 18 Nov - Salon Honnorat
Paul Bourgine
Daniel Krob
Ralph Dum
Alain Bloch
Dominique Luzeaux
In modern society, complex industrial systems are just everywhere. Transportation systems or industrial equipments are typical examples of complex systems that we are using or dealing with in everyday life, sometimes without even knowing their underlying technological complexity.
"Complex" can refer to the fact that the design and engineering of these industrial systems are incredibly complex and managerial operations. Complex industrial systems are indeed characterized by the intrinsic difficulty of their design, the large number of the sub-systems they involve and the big amount of different technologies and domains they imply.
On the importance of Information Technology
A main trend to deal with all these complexities is information technology (IT). IT has revolutionised engineering and business due to spectacular performance increase in the acquisition, storage and processing of data. Now, IT is ready to move up the 'knowledge chain'. The vision is to use IT as a means to assemble business architectures 'on-demand'. All businesses wishing for flexibility in changing their business processes or changing their organizations dynamically will have to adopt such adaptive business architectures in particular those trying to compete in the Internet enabled economy.
9:00-11:00 – Introduction – the importance of Information Technology
- Ulf Dahlsten, Director, EC-Information Society Technology Program
- Stuart Feldman, Vice President, IBM Computer Science Research
Service Models: A Bridge between Human Activities and Computational Processes
- Yann Barbaux, Executive Director of EADS Research Center-France
Modelisation and decision
- Maurice Klein, Director of Worldwide Competence Pole System@TIC
enterprise cluster for innovation in complex industrial systems design
Comparing complex systems approaches in natural and industrial systems
Industrial systems as well as industrial products become more and more sophisticated. As systems of subsystems with strong interactions between their components, they become more unpredictable outside a too standard limited domain. Information processing systems as well as workflow of services become also more and more complex. The kind of tasks to be represented are generally permanently changing for adapting to a changing environment.
Natural systems are mainly self-organized at different scales. In addition, biological systems show remarkable properties of adaptation at the different level of organization from the cell to the ecosphere. But natural and biological systems are more and more artificialized through human actions, leading to the same kind of issues than industrial systems.
In which sense these two different classes of systems has to be considered as complex? In which extent can they share common methods for reconstructing their dynamics from data, for their governance and their (re)design ?
11h30-13:00 – Comparing complex systems approachs in natural and industrial systems.
A round table animated by Paul Bourgine (Ecole Polytechnique) and Ralph Dum (EC)
Geoffrey West , President of Santa Fe Institute
Norman Packard, CEO Protolife
Maurice Klein, Director of Worldwide Competence Pole System@TIC
Stuart Feldman, Vice President, IBM Computer Science Research
Yann Barbaux, Executive Director of EADS Corporate Research Centre – France
Discussion
Governance of complexity factor
Managing complexity is one of the main permanent challenge of the industry. On one hand, engineers must deal with the intrinsic technical complexity of the large industrial systems they are creating and deploying. On the other hand, managers must of course be able to take into account the complex financial and strategic aspects of the modern business. Moreover these last points have now a days also a purely technical dimension since they are highly taken in charge by information systems which appear as the technical tools that have to be used to implement enterprise strategies. All together, all these actors must also take more and more into account the human parameters which are probably the most complicated to deal with.
In this general context, what are therefore the methods used practically by the engineers to face the technical and managerial complexity? How can one still imagine winning financial and business strategies in the modern complex enterprise world ? Why is the information system so important for a company? How can one motivate and push the people forward in an enterprise?
14:30-18:00 –
Governance of complexity factors
A round table animated by Alain Bloch (HEC), Daniel Krob (Ecole Polytechnique),
Dominique Luzeaux (DGA)
Keynote speeches :
- Gilbert Multedo, Thales Land & Joint Systems : Engineering governance
- Bruce Kogut, INSEAD : Strategic and financial governance
- Olivier D'Herbemont, Chairman, Belle Aventure : Human factor governance
- Yves Caseau, Chief of Information Systems, Bouygues Telecom : Information system governance
Discussion
