Industrial Dynamics

Rating:
Summary: An up-to-date Classic
Review: A very high quality study of the information-feedback characteristics of industrial activity; describing how the flows of information, money, orders, materials, personnel, and capital plant interact to produce the system's behavior over time; relating organizational structure & corporate policy to corporate growth and stability.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: A very high quality study of the information-feedback characteristics of industrial activity; describing how the flows of information, money, orders, materials, personnel, and capital plant interact to produce the system's behavior over time; relating organizational structure & corporate policy to corporate growth and stability.

Rating:
Summary: 1960's Classic on System Dynamics - still important
Review: I agree with the previous reviewer, that Mr.Forresters book was one the most important and yet most ignored books on dynamics/strategy in the 20th century.

Forresters basic insight was: translate the evolution of a market segment into cybernetic circles, translate those circles into differential equation, and those equations into a computer language like DYNAMO.

Rating:
Summary: An up-to-date Classic
Review: I am Professor in the field that the author created, and (many years ago) one of the author's students. I may be biased about the field's importance, but not about this book's extraordinary clarity and continuing relevance to the field.

The book presents the philosophy, the mathematics and the computer modeling needed to take a fresh and practical perspective on managing social systems. The book's implications go far beyond "industrial" systems(though people interested in the dynamics of businesses won't be disappointed). The principles presented in this book have subsequently been applied to understanding issues in all sorts of social systems: cities, the environment, epidemics, romantic relationships, and terrorism to name just a few.

Industrial Dynamics was the first book published in system dynamics, a field founded by Jay Forrester (the author) at MIT. Nothing in this book is outdated. The fundamentals of the field remain as Jay Forrester described them in 1961. Forrester's insistance that the field be relevant and understandable has no better incarnation than this book.