SYSTEMS AND SCIENCE, INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION INTRODUCTION Peter Checkland it Professor of Commercial Svetems and Deputy Head of the Department of Systems Engineering atthe University of Lancaster. He was previously with LCI. Led, where he worked on many projects concerned With innovation it the marenende fibres industry. ‘This paper was delivered as a Inaugural Lecture in Decemtber 1969 in the University of Lancaster. PB. Checkland “Systems”, “science”, “industry”, “innovation”; these are potent words. I shall not in my first sentences explain my title; rather the whole lecture will be concerned with that explanation. I shall start with wo poets. Poets think concentrated thoughts; two minor poets provide images which are useful to the Systems Engineer as he contemplates the nature of his activity, his role; for that is what I intend to do—to describe and question the intellectual framework of the activity The first minor poet is John Betjeman, who in a poem called, quaintly, “The Planster's Vision” writes, or rather cries out: have a Vision of the Future, chum, ‘The workers fats in fields of soya beans ‘Tower up like silver pencils, score on score: [And Surging Millions hear the Challenge come From microphones in communal canteens “No Right! No Wrong! All's perfect, evermore” “All's perfect evermore”: the Systems Engineers have done their work, the total system has been optimised, What a claim that is! The optimum solution has been defined and implemented. This idea of “optimising”, of finding the one best way, was perhaps a legitimate objective when Systems Engineers concerned themselves narrowly with industrial plants, with problems of their design and control. But if we aim to apply Systems Engineering principles to the business activity of industrial firms. and we do, we are involved at once in social systems. Can we hope to “optimise” them? Is this not a challenge to the people in them as man beings? ‘The Systems Engineer's culture is very much a culture of rationality—it is a be-logical, say-cxactly-what-you-mean, do-exactly-what-you-say, culture. But does not our humanity, our charity, reside closely with our irrationality? (Has anyone ever been rationally lovable? I doubt it.) So: is the Systems Engineer's effect on the people in his sytems a de-humanising effect? ‘That is a question I wish to pose: is Systems Engineering anti-human? I shall try to answer it My second minor poet is the best of that group of American poets known as “the Beats”, Allen Ginsberg. In a poem on the work of William Burroughs are two verses which go: ‘The method must be purest meat sind no symbolic dressing actual visions and actual prisons 235 seen then and now. ‘A raked lunch is natural t0 us, se eat reality sindwviches. But allegories are so mach lettuce ‘Don't hide the moines. Systems Engineers certainly eat “reality sandwiches”, but perhaps are too ready, in the pursuit of rationality, to “hide the madness’ Industrial activity which is science-based is committed to change because scientific knowledge itself continually changes; and industrial growth depends upon innovation, upon creative, irrational acts of invention, upon “madness”. fs it not likely that Systems Engineers, in designing systems and rules for their operation. will preclude 3sieges the possibility of creativity withia their systems? Is being systematic inhibiting to being creative? “These are two major challenges which the Systems Engincer must face: the challenge that he is antichuman, and the challenge that he is anti-creativity, Tn discussing a response to these challenges I shal fist explain the origin and nature of Systems Engincering. In doing so I shal strive for simplicity. The greatest of the White American folk singers, Woody Guthrie, suid “Let me be known ax the man who told you something you already know”. { shall try to emulate him. 1. Management Science Systems Engineering in its application to Commercial Systems, to government Systems, to social systems generally, is apparently a branch of Management Science; ‘one branch among many others; apparently. Manayement Science is characterised today by extreme confusion, There are two sources of this, First, there is considerable confusion among the practitioners of the ‘many different varieties of Management Seience. And second, there is confusion due oie lack of impact on the day-to-day reality of management. There is an enormous gap between what is theoretically possible using all the techniques of Management Serence and what is actually put into practice. J shall argue that a Systems view, and Systems Engineering which is its practical manifestation, offer the best chance of resolving both these confusions. “The most important thing to say about Management Science is that it is not Science, Science is characterised by the fact that knowledge is extended by carrying ut repeatable experiments. The repeatability isthe essence of it. If you pour barium Showde solution into sulphuric acid a white precipitate of barium sulphate will be formed; this happens in Surbiton and it happens in Singapore, and it happens every time you repeat the experiment. Science is built upon this repeatability and also upon the technique in which the effect of changing some variable in a situation is examined by tunning 2 parallel so-called “control” experiment in which the variable is not Changed. Comparison between the two then reveals the effect of the variable. in management, however, there is no method of conducting experiments ia this way, We cannot do something as managers and know both what happened and what would have happened if we had not done it. Even the most ‘sophisticated Guanctative techniques available to the manager ean be used only to reduce incertainty or to evaluate risk, not to establish anything with certainty in a scientific Sense, This means that industrial management is a very difficult job indeed. (In 1917 lo Yuu Lenin, looking ahead to the revolution, wrote: “It is perfectly possible . . . within 24 hours after the overthrow of the capitalists and the bureaucrats, to replace them cans in control of production and distribution ... by the armed workers"—and I don't vl think that he intended that they were to be armed with slide rules! Few would now : tures with Lenin that management i that easy; and in fact the management literature ihe on + Gmerging from “economic eybernetcians™ as they call themselves in the US.S.R. is very similae to that produced in the West) ‘S No; management is a difficult job dominated by subjective judgements. We may feel that a manager has done well in running a company profitably but we cannot now it in scientific sense—maybe he ought to have done even better, we cannot tel It is probably because of this subjectivity which dominates the management field that there is sueh a proliferation of Management so-called Science. All contributions fre gratefully received, even if they are rarely made the basis for managerial ation. The collection of sub-disciplines and techniques which shelter under the Management Science umbrella is large and heterogeneous. To name a few: Method Study, Diver Information Theory. Value Engineering, Cybernetics, Behavioural Science, Econe- cal dy al ny @epee neni tis at ete: erm metrics, Operational Research, Systems Analysis, Decision Theory, Market Research, Input-output Analysis, Ergonomics; there are others. All are relevant in some way to some of the manager's problems. Ina situation as confused as this the best hope for enlightenment is to find a new way of looking at things, a framework which provides a pattern to allay the confusion. Systems Engineering in the Lancaster sensc of the term is an attempt to do that, ‘an attempt both to reveal a pattern in the confusion of Management Science and to close the gap between the possibilites and the actualities. 2, Systems Science Systems Engineering is the practical manifestation of Systems Science, an attempt to use Systems concepts to achieve and secure practical improvements in real systems. Tn explaining the nature of Systems Engineering we must start from Systems Science, which is itself part of a shift of perspective in scientific thinking generally. ‘Nature presents itself to us as a chaotic flux which, objectively, must be regarded as indifferent to us as human beings. The entropy of the natural world—its degree of disorder—inevitably, naturally, increases with times the chaos gets worse unless ‘we do something about it. Science and technology are concerned to do something, about it, to reduce the disorder, and traditionally have made progress by taking an arbitrary selection of areas of Nature which can be investigated independently of teach other. Physics represents one such selection, chemistry another. Figure 1 sets ‘out some of the traditionally-selected areas of scientific study. ENGINEERING] —> [PHYSICS] <— | MATHEMATICS: [Manifestation Language for jin_ortefocts formal__treatment ICHEMISTRY| [BIOLOGY] JMEDICAL SCIENCE land PSYCHOLOGY SOCIAL SCIENCES, FFroune 1; Traditionallyzelected areas of scientific study. Inthe centre of Figure I are some “subjects” of science. Mathematics is the language for their formal treatment; engineering is the manifestation of science in artefacts Both are strongly related to physics. less strongly related to other subjects in the li and decreasingly so as we descend it. ‘The most fundamental science is physics, in that it deals with mass, force, energy and is highly quantified. Chemistry is more qualitative but still highly quantified; biology is less quantitative and medical science and the social sciences still less so. Ina sense each science strives to become physics; the dream is that it may in the end be re-written in terms of physics, in terms of the fundamental interactions of forces between masses. (When [ was a chemist I certainly used to feel that the subject was really making progress when chemical reactions could be described in terms of the ‘energies and force fields of the molecules concerned, rather than in terms of cookery.) ey