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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
This book focuses on the emergence of the "science of sustainability" and the key concepts in making sustainability operational in an organization. The authors discuss the methods, techniques and tools needed to manage the impact of sustainability and how these can be reformulated into business models and solutions for new growth and applications. They then move onto the reformulation of future thinking processes before ending by looking towards an approach for the measurement of sustainability and competitiveness.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Note to all Contributors
Note to the Reader
List of Acronyms
Introduction
PART 1: Sustainability: Toward the Unification of Some Underlying Principles and Mechanisms
1: Toward a Sustainability Science
1.1. Introduction
1.2. What does unification mean?
1.3. Coming back to sustainability: how many “sustainabilities”?
1.4. Sustainability: what kind of unification? An integration issue?
1.5. What kind of paradigm do we have to integrate?
1.6. The issue and the implementation of a new dimension
1.7. Extensions of the concept
2: Sustainability in Complex Systems
2.1. Preamble: theories of interconnected systems
2.2. Analysis of feedback phenomena in an assembly manufacturing cell
2.3. Application to complex systems: quantitative characteristics of a deterministic chaos
2.4. General considerations about interactions in networked organizations
2.5. Role of feedback in mimicry and ascendancy over others
2.6. Network theory: additional characteristics due to their new structure
2.7. Simplexification
2.8. Convergences in network theory
3: Extension: From Complexity to the Code of Thought
3.1. The code of thought: effects of cognition and psyche in global sustainability
3.2. Is sustainability the only technological and technocratic approach?
3.3. The three laws of sustainability: prediction and anticipation in complex systems
3.4. Consequence: toward a new dimension
3.5. Conclusion
3.6. Indicators for monitoring the EU sustainable development strategy
PART 2: Operationalization: Methods, Techniques and Tools – the Need to Manage the Impact
4: From Context to Knowledge: Building Decision-making Systems
4.1. Introduction
4.2. How about obtaining a sustainable knowledge?
4.3. Preliminary consideration: the nature of the problems encountered in test and diagnosis
4.4. Preamble: basic concepts for creating knowledge
4.5. Retroduction and abduction
4.6. Deduction and induction
4.7. The development of a relational reasoning graph
4.8. A complete integrated reasoning process
4.9. How can a computer analyze different types of reasoning?
4.10. Applications
5: From Context to Knowledge: Basic Methodology Review
5.1. Application of abduction and retroduction to create knowledge
5.2. Analysis and synthesis as modeling process
5.3. Background on empirical results: integration principles
5.4. A review and comparison of some common approaches: TRIZ and C-K theory
6: From Knowledge to Context and Back: The C-K Theory and Methodology
6.1. Introduction
6.2. A primer on C-K theory
6.3. On the nature of the knowledge space
6.4. On the nature of the concept space
6.5. Discussing the theory
6.6. Some differentiating points and benefits of C-K theory
6.7. On fielding C-K theory in organizations
6.8. A summary on C-K theory
6.9. A short glossary on C-K theory
6.10. Links with knowledge management
6.11. Example on a specific futuristic conceptual case: “a man who can travel through time”
6.12. Methodological findings
PART 3: Reformulating the Above Into Business Models and Solutions for New Growth and Applications
7: Principles and Methods for the Design and Development of Sustainable Systems
7.1. Introduction
7.2. How to go further?
7.3. Examples of methods and learning related to complex adaptive systems
7.4. First example: crisis management
7.5. Second example: urban organizations
7.6. Third example: education and career evolution
7.7. A review of survival, resilience and sustainability concepts
7.8. Methodologies in sustainability
7.9. Resilience: methodology
7.10. Information system sustainability
7.11. Application: managing the “skill mismatch” in a company
7.12. Sustainability of the organizations in a company
7.13. Conclusions
8: Toward the Mass Co-design: Why is Social Innovation so Attractive?
8.1. Introduction
8.2. How can we define innovation and social innovation?
8.3. Sustainability: how can we position social innovation?
8.4. Social innovation examples
8.5. A contextual change in society
8.6. Basic concepts and mechanisms
8.7. The principle of circularity: a paradigm shift
8.8. Generalization: how to turn back time
8.9. Problems of technological evolution
8.10. Evolution: application to cellular networks
8.11. Conclusions: the new sustainable environment
9: On Integrating Innovation and CSR when Developing Sustainable Systems
9.1. The new Smartphones: a tool for an inclusive society
9.2. Innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors
9.3. Integrating business objectives (CBO) and corporate social responsibility (SCR)
9.4. Lessons gained from this study case: toward a citizen democracy
9.5. Conclusion on crowd and social approaches
PART 4: Reformulating Future Thinking: Processes and Applications
10: Sustainability Engineering and Holism: Thinking Conditions are a Must
10.1. Introduction to holism
10.2. Toward a holistic company
10.3. Culture: on what positive factors can we rely?
10.4. Sustainability: a framework
10.5. Application: holonic industrial systems
10.6. Consequences
11: Sustainable Cognitive Engineering: Brain Modeling; Evolution of a Knowledge Base
11.1. Introduction
11.2. Sustainable cognition: definition and concepts
11.3. Concepts and “slippage” needs: effects related to new generations
11.4. Basic structure of our brain: a probabilistic approach
11.5. Application and probabilistic reasoning in updating a knowledge base: a more sustainable model
11.6. Sustainable cognition: brain structure, understanding micro-to-macro links
11.7. More recent developments
11.8. Detection of novelties through adaptive learning and fractal chaos approaches
11.9. Neuro computing: new opportunities provided by quantum physics
11.10. Applications
11.11. Quantum physics: impact on future organizations
12: Brain and Cognitive Computing: Where Are We Headed?
12.1. State of the art
12.2. Achievements: is neuroscience able to explain how to perform sustained assumptions and studies?
12.3. Artificial brain: evolution of the simulation models
12.4. Examples of challenges to be well controlled
PART 5: Towards an Approach to the Measurement of Sustainability and Competitivity
13: On Measuring Sustainability
13.1. Introduction
13.2. Some basic criteria specific to the new “Sustainable” era
13.3. What are the nature and limits of the new paradigm, in terms of sustainability evolution?
13.4. A reminder about competitivity and sustainability properties
13.5. Synthesis: the present dimensions of a production system
13.6. An under-assessed value: time
13.7. Application and results
13.8. Two new dimensions: thought and information within network theory
13.9. Synthesis: cognitive advances provided by the new exchange and communication tools
13.10. Consequences and characteristics linked to a global network notion
13.11. Back to the code of matter: contributions to “Simultaneous Time” and “Network Theory”
13.12. Application of quantum interactions
13.13. Sustainability: how to widen the scope of competitiveness indicators?
13.14. Conclusion
13.15. Social interactions and massively multiplayer online role playing games
General Conclusion – Where Are We Now?
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure I.1. Project management – the five code categories building the “whole sustainability” concept [MAS 15]
Figure I.2. The five intensity levels of sustainability reflect five different ways of thinking sustainability
1: Towards a Sustainability Science
Figure 1.1. Developments and literature in sustainability sciences [BET 11]
Figure 1.2. Sustainability components [CFT 10]
Figure 1.3. Commitments to sustainability [NHS 14]
Figure 1.4. Wormhole in the Cosmos [BAL 05]
Figure 1.5. Distribution of potentials, and optima, along solutions’ surface [ENS 14]. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 1.6. Distribution of Mandelbrot power laws according to the value of the “K” exponent. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 1.7. In high technologies, normal distribution is an exception [MAS 06]
2: Sustainability in Complex Systems
Figure 2.1. Model of a manufacturing cell with a positive feedback
Figure 2.2. Deterministic chaos related to inventory evolution
Figure 2.3. Evolution of the inventory has the same curved shape and the same properties as the previous one: trend of growth is exponential
Figure 2.4. Swarm structure of interconnection networks and collective intelligence (courtesy of F. Guinand, LITIS Lab, Rouen University, France)
Figure 2.5. Partitioning and clustering of interconnected networks (courtesy of F. Guinand, LITIS, Rouen University, France). For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 2.6. The two types of mycorrhizae [NIL 06]
Figure 2.7. Simplexification of interconnected networks (courtesy of F. Guinand, LITIS, Rouen University, France)
Figure 2.8. Graph partitioning [GAR 08]
3: Extension: From Complexity to the Code of Thought
Figure 3.1. “Crossing the time-space wall”
4: From Context to Knowledge: Building Decision-making Systems
Figure 4.1. Simplified description of the brain structure (Lubopikto encyclopedia)
Figure 4.2. The knowledge-creating hierachy
Figure 4.3. Symptoms, causes and effects diagram [MAS 06]
Figure 4.4. Learning steps in artificial intelligence: the chaining between interrelated algorithms
Figure 4.5. Integrating the basic reasoning flows [WAL 03]
5: From Context to Knowledge: Basic Methodology Review
Figure 5.1. Depicting the application of the two lines of inquiry; abduction and retroduction [SAM 13]
Figure 5.2. The analysis-synthesis model construction process [WAL 03]
Figure 5.3. Typical forms of intelligence and decision models [WAL 03]. The general term of ‘model’ is here used to describe any abstract representation
Figure 5.4. Knowledge development approaches [HER 92]
Figure 5.5. Knowledge development approaches [KOL 75]
Figure 5.6. How to get reliable knowledge
Figure 5.7. Seven futures-compelling characteristics of a C-K approach
Figure 5.9. Comparing TRIZ with C-K Invent method
Figure 5.8. C-K models based on Actions, Knowledge, and Effects [FEL 11]
6: From Knowledge to Context and Back: The C-K Theory and Methodology
Figure 6.1. Four quadrants are made up from the Known and Unknown dimensions, which map the gap between Future Studies and Science Fiction. The former field preferably starts from the Known and strives to embark into an exploration of the Unknown (B zone). The latter boasts a symmetrical path and may gain relevance from actualizing the A zone in part
Figure 6.2. The C-K diagram expansion for the “time-travelling man” concept
Figure 6.3. The Past-Future timeline as sensibly perceived by man refers to the Chronos view of Time by ancient Greeks (by opposition to Kairos). Axis “t?” refers to questioning of the two notions of time
7: Principles and Methods for the Design and Development of Sustainable Systems
Figure 7.1. Encapsulated train in China [Reuters – Ming Ming – 2014]
Figure 7.2. Future smart cities (GWANGGYO project, South Korea). Sustainable Cities/Urban Planning (final thoughts from eoi.es)
Figure 7.3. Sustainability – interdependence and organization of the concepts
Figure 7.4. Incomplete graph interconnections. Limited feedback loops impact sustainability [CHA 06]
Figure 7.5. Sustainability underlying mechanisms [CHA 06]
Figure 7.6. Lansey sustainable distribution – treatment of scarce water resources [CHOI 2011 – NAE-University of Arizona]. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 7.7. Sustainability improvement process (IBM Corporation – GTA)
8: Toward the Mass Co-design: Why is Social Innovation so Attractive?
Figure 8.1. Social innovation and emergence [MAP 13]
Figure 8.2. Integrative approach of social innovation [VAN 14]
Figure 8.3. Complexity in semantic networks (source: CSS-Society – March 2012 newsletter). For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 8.4. Conceptual images of multiverses (Matt Williams, Florida State University 2010). For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 8.5. Today’s firms: combination of operations modes, first by emergence, then via classical management
Figure 8.6. Social innovation and development: emergence of ambivalence with the two inverse modeling approaches
Figure 8.7. Merging rational (conventional) and self-organization
Figure 8.8. A system evolving stepwise over time
Figure 8.9. An improved system functioning through an optimization process including simple feedbacks
Figure 8.10. A clustered population with strong and weak interconnections between individuals
Figure 8.11. Groups and clusters in a strongly structures social network. Here, the K-connectivity is simplexified
Figure 8.12. Reassessment of efforts in a social project
9: On Integrating Innovation and CSR when Developing Sustainable Systems
Figure 9.1. How to view sustainability locally with the strategic triple line design tool of Braggart & McDonough. The tool allows to create value in each fractal sector
10: Sustainability Engineering, and Holism: Thinking Conditions are a Must
Figure 10.1. Global approach and main factors involved in sustainability
Figure 10.2. The bottom up approach in advanced citizen governances
Figure 10.3. Holonic modules of an agile manufacturing system (IMS-GNOSIS)
Figure 10.4. Four basic nested properties of sustainability
Figure 10.5. Sustainability is an iterative process (CRAN – Nancy University); http://scp-gdr-macs.cran.uhp-nancy.fr/Intro.html
11: Sustainable Cognitive Engineering: Brain Modeling; Evolution of a Knowledge Base
Figure 11.1. Sustainability: main approach at human being level
Figure 11.2. Evolution of society: characteristics of last three generations
Figure 11.3. A fully interconnected graph in agents’ population with feedback loops
Figure 11.4. Failure analysis: a “symptom-cause-action” diagram. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 11.5. Different views of the brain showing Bayesian models of brain functions. Links are probabilistic. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 11.6. Brain view showing an association network of a Boltzmann machine type. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 11.7. 3D synaptic interconnected computer chip(FCM). For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
12: Brain and Cognitive Computing: Where Are We Headed?
Figure 12.1. Moore’s law trend depicted as FLOPS by year. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 12.2. Functional architecture of SPAUN
Figure 12.3. Image from the Connectome Project showing interconnections inside the human brain. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
13: On Measuring Sustainability
Figure 13.1. Measurement process for sustainability [WEF 14]
Figure 13.2. Production control organization [GIA 88]
Figure 13.3. Sustainability of a fractal chaos: convergence toward a 3D trajectory within a 3D envelope [MAS 08]. For a color version of the figure, see www.iste.co.uk/massotte/sustainablity2.zip
Figure 13.4. Success factors aimed at improving the sustainability of a system [USE 11]
Figure 13.5. Evolution of two independent objects
Figure 13.6. Evolution of two synchronized objects
Figure 13.7. Opening four interaction modes depending on geo and time differences
Figure 13.8. Big data – volume of information recorded in 1 year [IBM 11]
Conclusion: General Conclusion – Where Are We Now?
Figure C.1. The Energy/Information/Matter concept with regard to the two entropies theory
Figure C.2. The future dimensional space of sustainability
Figure C.3. Holistic and sustainability environment: smart cities and urban development (Rencontres Rotariennes du Grand Sud-Ouest (RRGSO – Greater Southern France Rotary National Meeting) [MAS 13b]
Figure C.4. How to organize priorities and integrate concepts over time [PAU 15]
Figure C.5. Sustainability: the new biocapacitive environment
List of Tables
3: Extension: From Complexity to the Code of Thought
Table 3.1. Characterization of four “hard science” domains that are involved in the codes of sustainability
5: From Context to Knowledge: Basic Methodology Review
Table 5.2. Ambivalences in Basic emotions [MAS 14]
7: Principles and Methods for the Design and Development of Sustainable Systems
Table 7.1. Evolution of cultures and practices in sustainable management
13: On Measuring Sustainability
Table 13.1. Population growth, human organization and behavior as dependent on power index
Table 13.2. Block modeling of human usages and attitudes (adapted from [EUR 10])
Conclusion: General Conclusion – Where Are We Now?
Table C.1. How three main paradigms take part in decision support systems
Guide
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“An outstanding advance in foresight methodology.”
Dr. Thierry GAUDINhttp://gaudin.org
Member of the Club of Rome–BrusselsHonorary Member of the Club of Budapest–Paris
Founder and President of “Prospective 2100”, a World Foresight Associationhttp://2100.orgMember of the Board of the World Futures Studies Federationwww.wfsf.orgOne of the four founders of the six countriesProgram on Innovation Policies6cp.net
Operationalizing Sustainability
Pierre Massotte
Patrick Corsi
First published 2015 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2015The rights of Pierre Massotte and Patrick Corsi to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015946704
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-84821-892-5
Note to all Contributors
Sustainability isn’t really a new topic!
Humanity has faced this concept for many years. Yet, so far, the scope covered by the term “sustainability” hasn’t been very wide, even if, in a sense, its “soul” was present. As an example, both within IBM and École des Mines, we used to present sustainability by introducing such names as “global quality” or “global optimization”, etc. This was done while conducting sustainability actions and sometimes without the measuring the actual range of our contribution, either at the social or ecological level. Could we possibly have these kinds of pioneers?
The answer is no. Actually, any evolution, even in advanced technological fields, is based on stepwise jumps, which may bear the names of mutation, self-organization or adaptation. Even when considering a paradigm change, the fundamental roots of evolution remain the same and any process remains but a process.
To reinforce our working baseline, experiences and assets within the sustainability subject matter, we have opted for grounding the proposed approach on examples, test cases, results and skills, all gained everywhere over several decades.
In preparing and launching this book (in twinned operations with its companion book Sustainability Calling [MAS 15b] during a sustained period of more than four years over 2011–2015), we strived to create the present original synthesis from the sum of information that we collected, with the view to elaborate a technology suited to an actual and current sustainability concept.
However, a smaller fraction of the contributing elements may originate from authors unidentified to us. Or possibly, of whom we involuntarily lost trace of the names. All authors explicitly mentioned in the two bibliographies, and those who may perhaps not appear as well, certainly contributed either directly or indirectly to the development of an emerging “sustainability science”. Furthermore, creating an exhaustive account of sustainability topics is a daunting endeavor, which would likely require an entire library, if not simply an impossible task to achieve. While we wish to express our sincere gratitude to each and every one of the diverse authors for having enlightened us and for their useful contribution to this necessary and promising field, we therefore remain candidly apologetic for our any possible oversight resulting from these omissions.
Note to the Reader
“Sustainability is a keyword. We were happy to build a plane that is sustainable in terms of energy. We could also make life in the cockpit sustainable, as well as for a human being. And this, we didn’t know if it was possible”.
André Borshberg, Solar Impulse pilot, upon landing in Hawaii on July 3rd 2015 at sunrise, after a nonstop 5 days and 5 nights solar energy flight from Nagoya, Japan [SOL 15].
The ten principles of the UN Global Compact (UN Advisory Board, July 26th, 2000)
Will mankind one day secure a guide to a sustainable world? This book is an attempt. Like solar impulse and other far-fetched dreams, only attempts, trials and feedback can pave the new way. Although we share a definite clarity about this ultimate aim, steering the way through a highly complex world is not easy. Only smaller steps can be proposed to decision makers for the time being.
There exists by now a real concern for the life-sustaining capacities of the Earth. If only in the realm of climate change, the international Kyoto Protocol 1997 treaty slowly came into force for a number of countries in 2005. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) proceedings now include the 2015 Paris COP21 Climate Change Conference. Yet, the concern is of an encompassing nature and it is called by one word only: sustainability.
The present book is the complementary book to Sustainability Calling: Underpinning Technologies, by the same authors and publishing houses (published in September 2015) [MAS 15b].
For a comprehensive understanding of the foundations of sustainability, it is recommended to first read the above book, which provides the models, methods and tools to investigate and tackle the deeper notion of sustainability in a strategic way. However, the present book implements the ways to make sustainability operational and attempts at measuring it and, for practitioners, can be read without the first one. Together, the two books constitute a comprehensive treaty on sustainability for a variety of academic and executive readers in all walks of post-modern activities.
In Sustainability Calling: Underpinning Technologies, the authors discuss the mechanisms underlying sustainability and the principles to take into account to define its technologies (in the etymological sense), even if and when the aggregation and integration of these principles and mechanisms can not be done yet with presently available technology.
The objective of the present book is to exhibit an attempt of unification, based on these concepts, one that is implementable. The tactical part about sustainability implementation and operationalization (the “how to do”) is also meant to discover, suggest and develop new practical elements about a future method. The authors attempt to answer the issues of main importance; yet an exhaustive account necessitates at least three times the volume of this book. It provides a mind-centered roadmap on how sustainability must be addressed in the field and how the measurement of a sustainable system can be performed.
To begin with, the following introduction develops a vision and a process to determine how a question relevant to sustainability can be answered. Let us always keep in mind that sustainability can be investigated as a new science given its specificities.
List of Acronyms
ACPVI
Analyse en Composantes Principales basées sur les Variables Instrumentales
(see PCAIV)
AFNOR
Agence Française de Normalisation
AHT
average handling time
AI
artificial intelligence
AIDS
acquired immune deficiency syndrome
ANNs
artificial neural networks
ANSI
American National Standards Institute
APS
advanced planning and scheduling
ATM
asynchronous transfer mode
ASS
after sale service
BA
business analytics
BCG
Boston Consulting Group (Strategy)
BCI
brain–computer interface
BFI
big factors inventory
BPR
business process engineering
CAD
computer-aided design
CBR
case-based reasoning
CEO
Chief Executive Officer
CFO
Chief Finance Officer
CHON
carbon – hydrogen – oxygen – nitrogen
CHP
combined heat and power
CIM
computer integrated manufacturing
CIO
Chief Information Officer
CMM
capability maturity model
CRM
customer relationship management
CSC
Corporate Service Corps
CSR
corporate social responsibility collaborative work
CW
competitive watch
DMS
decision making system
DNA
deoxyribonucleic acid
DSS
decision support system
ECB
European Central Bank
EI
economic intelligence (business intelligence)
EMA
École des Mines d’Alès
EPFL
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland)
EPR
Einstein–Podolsky-Rosen (thought experiment)
EPT
European Patent Office (
http://www.epo.org
)
ERP
enterprise resources planning
EU
European Union
FA
functional analysis
FAST
FAST diagram (Function Analysis System Technique)
FFT
fast Fourier transform
FLOPS
floating-point operations per second
FR
functional requirements (functional analysis)
GCI
global competitiveness index
GDP
gross domestic product
HEC
Hautes Etudes Commerciales
HP
Hewlett-Packard
HMS
holonic manufacturing system
IBM
international business machines
ICT
information and communication technologies
IDEF0
Icam definition for function modeling
IKB
innovation knowledge base
IMF
International Monetary Fund
IMS
Intelligent Manufacturing System (European initiative)
INRA
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (France)
IP
intellectual property
ISC
initial sensitivity conditions ISC Innovation Steering Committee
IS
information systems
IT
information technologies
KADS
knowledge acquisition and documentation structuring
KBS
knowledge-based systems
KDB
knowledge data base
KF
knowledge fluency
KM
knowledge management (management of knowledge and know-how)
KSF
key success factors
LED
light-emitting diode
LHS
left hand side
LLE
local linear embedding
LOC
lines of code
MAQ
maximum allowable quantity
MES
manufacturing execution system
MIDs
mobile internet services
MMO
massively multiplayer online
MTBF
mean time between failures
MTTR
mean time to repair
NBIC
Nanotechnology – Biotechnology – Information technologies – Cognitive sciences
NFC
near field communication
NGO
Non-Governmental Organization
NHS
National Health Service
NIH
non-invented here
NIH
National Institute of Health
NLDS
nonlinear dynamic systems
NPD
new product development
OBS
organization breakdown structure (functional structure)
OCD
objective costs design
OR
operations research
OTSM-TRIZ
a general theory of powerful thinking
P2P
peer-to-peer
PC
production control/personal computer/personal computing
PCT
patent cooperation treaty (
www.wipo.org/pct/
)
PCAIV
principal component analysis based on instrumental variables (see ACPVI)
PERT
program of evaluation and review technique
PLOOT
plant layout optimization
PLC
product lifecycle
PMI
Project Management Institute
PPC
pay per call
PPT
pay per time
P-TECH
pathway in technology
R&D
research and development
RAS
reliability – availability – serviceability
RFID
radio frequency identification
RHS
right hand side
RNA
ribonucleic acid
ROI
return on investment
RPG
role playing game
RSS
really simple syndication
SA
system analysis
SADT
structure analysis and design technique
SCEM
supply chain event management
SCI
sustainable competitiveness index
SCP
system controlled by product
SDS
sustainable development strategy
SEEA
system of integrated environmental and economic accounting
SHS
social and human sciences
SIC
sensitivity to initial conditions
SMAC
social, mobile, analytics, connected
SME
small and medium enterprise
SPQL
shipped product quality level
SPS
sustainable production system
SSME
service science, management and engineering
SW
strategic watch
SWOT
strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats (Strategy)
TBC
time-based competitivity
TQM
total quality management
TT
takt time
TRIZ
theory of inventive problem solving (
Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch
– TRIZ, Russian acronym)
TW
technology watch
UAV
unmanned aerial vehicle (e.g. drones)
UML
unified modeling language
UN
United Nations
VA
value analysis
WIP
work in progress
WIPO
World Intellectual Property Organization (
www.wipo.org
)
WWW
world wide web
NOTE.– The world “backlog” is often used in the specific manufacturing context and means “equal to all customer of supplier orders received and not yet shipped or delivered” [GRE 87]. Outside this context, a backlog retains its usual meaning of accumulation, supply or arrears.
Introduction
I.1. Introduction
In the 2000s, in order to adapt and secure its future, the School of Mines (EMA) in Ales, France, took the decision to disseminate the “entrepreneurship approach” and the “Web environment” concept, while focusing on other missions as well, such as technological research or economic action. In terms of sustainable institution, the objective of the EMA was to adapt and develop a new way of thinking, to implement the right organization and resources to be competitive, to ensure its survival and to develop employment. The aim of this approach was to develop EMA’s competitiveness through advancing sciences and its innovative vision.
Questions were asked about the relevance of R&D in a high level engineering school. For instance, concerning research topics, what is the relationship between quarks and men, a computer and the cosmos, prebiotics and the interstellar midst? Or between country macrohistory, brain development and governance?
The answer given shows that we cannot consider one concept and ignore the other, because all is interdependent. Should we instead remain confined to the unique field of industrial activity? The discussions led to reconsider the R&D strategy for the EMA institutional business in terms of the scientific and engineering areas to be covered or developed. As well as the philosophical, societal, and environmental approaches, a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary laboratory called “Centre Intersciences” was proposed. Some key elements were already defined in 2002 [MAS 02], that remain valid and we will now use as an introduction to this book, which focuses on operationalizing sustainability.
A sustainability property can be viewed as the intrinsic ability of an “open” system. To elaborate a more comprehensive approach, it is necessary to handle sustainability as a science, with its own ontologies, goals and technologies. To date, only partial modeling approaches exist and there is no overall coherence, although a wide range of scientists and experts from various fields are working on the subject. The fact is that multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches are not common. Moreover, few standards exist while a large number of lobbies are actively involved.
I.2. Historical approach in sciences
The rational thinking is based on the Discours de la Méthode from René Descartes developed in the 17th Century. This way of thinking, now conventional, stipulates that the world is rational, mathematical, knowledgeable and splittable. Later in literature, the French dramaturgy “classicism” appeared with regular theater comedies based on the rule of unity of place, time and action. Famous artisans of this doctrine were Boileau, Corneille or Racine.
These expressions “classicism” or “three unities”, as applied to literature, imply notions of order, clarity, moral purpose and good taste. Many of these notions were directly inspired by the works of Aristotle and Horace, and then by classical Greek and Roman masterpieces. They enabled the structuring of our reasoning in order to decompose a problem into subproblems, then to find a local solution to each subproblem.
These statements can be globalized (holonic approach): they give high praise to everything that can be systematized, organized and broken down; they lead to moving toward an encyclopedic knowledge. They still influence our scientific approaches, which are too often fragmented, clustered and centralized. However, such a search for “truth” has its own limits as the environment has changed: the world is more complex, the methods and algorithms used by mathematicians have become far more complicated; as a result, the previous statements have reached a dead-end.
Because of these limitations, the time has come to invent “other solutioning approaches”; more generally, to change our practices and transpose some aforementioned principles in the modern Internet world. To be more specific, “unity of place” breaks out due to globalization; “unity of time” has become very short and cannot take into account the constraints of evolution; and “unity of action” ignores the opening and diversification of interconnected businesses. In parallel, the presently and widely accepted definition of “sustainability” often addresses limited and specific closed areas as, in most situations, it is biocapacity oriented.
But here is an open and multidisciplinary world. Why not define and implement a whole sustainability concept? In which situations is it advisable to widen the concept of sustainability? With so much divergence observed everywhere, every time, and in any field of activity, is the current concept of sustainability still suitable?
This brings us to rethink the approaches and guidelines and to conduct our activity within a specific framework: the areas to be covered, the philosophical concerns and the environmental context. Having the Internet at hand, with its collaborative aspects and its boosting competition, is both inclusive and exclusive, liberating and dominating, enabling smarter cities yet retaining citizen usages. Sustainability is a dynamic and unstable concept, based on a fine balance of many ambivalences in order to optimize the global evolution of our mother nature. The time has come to challenge existing intellectual oligopolies, to reconsider some views about human beings finalities, and to reassess the truths in terms of pursuit of happiness and resource avoidance.
According to the results developed and obtained in our recent book Sustainability Calling: Underpinning Technologies [MAS 15b], the integration of ideas, principles and mechanisms can be achieved within three frameworks: universality, transdisciplinarity and reactivity. In this book, the way of thinking will be developed and evolve, as in any complex software project management or social evolution, through a spiral of codependency [MAS 15]. The sustainability guidelines, ideas and reference values leading our steps are discussed in the following sections.
I.3. A basic principle: universality – from simple to complex
Scientifically, the transition from “simple” to “complex” is based on an understandable and basic rule: all phenomena in nature involve the same fundamental laws, from the infinitely small (atoms) to the infinitely large (cosmos). The transformation highlights a number of features and properties about the world around that we can refer to as the principle of universality.
I.3.1. Everything is an assembly
Quarks are, for now, the basic components of matter allowing the development of a cell, an organ, etc., then of a living being, which is itself the result of billions of years of chemical and biological evolution. This assembly led to the existence of complex adaptive systems (e.g. in biology), themselves integrated in non-adaptive systems (such as galaxies). Such structures of Mandelbrot’s fractal type are becoming increasingly complex, constantly emerging over time around us. They can concern the social structures of living organisms or the evolution of sophisticated biological organisms, etc., yet all of them quite often proceed from the same basic mechanisms.
The resulting trend and the developments are almost irreversible because the world is unbalanced and asymmetric: fundamental relevant properties were discovered and rewarded by several Nobel prizes, Fields medals, etc., in recent years. Numerous domains are involved such as economics, physics, the weak interaction at atomic level with left-right asymmetry, biology and DNA, molecular chirality, human behavior, brain, etc.
I.3.2. Stability does not exist
Every element of our universe is subject to apparently random fluctuations, which allow the emergence of clusters and galaxies in the early universe. These emerging “patterns” are increasingly varied, complex and still evolving. They possess aggregated and volatile individual characteristics but their stability is tenuous. Nothing is actually stable and all these structures, when observed over a long time scale, show up different condensation and collapsing phenomena. A sort of regression leads to a convergence toward new regular patterns associated with a different type of complexity.
In an “early stage” universe subject to some complexification, we can express the level of aggregation, assembly or sophistication, by a parameter called algorithmic information content (AIC). The AIC is correlated with the increasing global entropy of the world around us and related to the fact that a concise and full modeling of a complex system is physically impossible. As a consequence, a scientist, an engineer or an economist faced with a prediction problem will develop increasingly complex solutions that are unstable, often inapplicable or rejected by users for the following reasons:
– solving methods are too much complicated (training issues);
– the user, ignoring such underlying behaviors, will not fully exploit the model and evaluate its results and significance (lack of motivation);
– experts, in order to maintain their job, will not communicate their know-how and provide answers to problems except at the deepest technical level. Similarly, salesmen may keep themselves safe by skewing basic information on specific problems (e.g. in case of unavailable or obsolete data).
I.3.3. Nature is diverse and changing
Diversity of life on Earth is the result of a long evolution that lasted about 5 billion years. In comparison, human cultural diversity is about a few tens of thousands of years old. Both continue to evolve. Scientists think that diversity is the result of self-organized events and generate local orders or patterns and create new structures within the global disorder of the Universe (the whole growing entropy).
Diversity must be maintained for the purpose of evolution. Indeed, diversity, which is disorder, is a source of wealth and creativity. It can generate new organizations that are better fitted to a certain environment and that will be better able to adapt to changing constraints. Diversity depends on two situations:
– in a simple context, it is about managing ambivalences and antagonisms;
– in more general situations, it can become highly complex, for instance the emergence of many relationships binding living beings and things to themselves and to the biosphere. Here, diversity consists in integrating heterogeneous data coming from various fields: environment, demography, economy, social, politics, psychology, military, ideology, etc.
Thus, diversity applies to the behavioral mechanisms in populations or to the evolution of cooperation and competition in social organizations. The latter highlight selection, development and reproduction mechanisms, foster human creative thinking and provide data in simplified simulations of natural complex adaptive systems, which will directly provide snippets of solutions to common problems: what will allow an industrial system to recover better than another? What is the effect of an autograft, of an implant and of the social integration into a new system or within the relationships of an individual with respect to a social group?
In industry, the social environment strongly modifies the recovery or the reorientation capabilities of a system. Whatever the levels of the evolution, certain biological and cognitive constants apply, for instance, learning abilities are correlated with social relationships. Also, the observation and measurement of a system performance depends on the ethological approach and specifically the cognitive ethology (e.g. the learning of songs produced by the starling birds in “La vie des étourneaux”, a work by M. Hausberger).
The above discussion illustrates that our inspiration and envisioning imagination should remain diversified. Why not copy or mimick animals that are endowed with some intelligence and conscience, or plants that are known to show some kind of intelligence? An example is a company in Southern France that worked on the identification and characterization of finch songs with neural net approaches to develop new quality control methods for ball bearings manufacturing. It was found that the acoustic signature of singing birds, bats, bells and ball bearings was similar.
Another example in industry was a company having to maintain the balance (or equilibrium) between economy, technology, politics and culture. In a post-modern world, each of these dimensions contributes to creative action in society and plays a role in the quality of life. Art is also a contributing activity first to the extent that it develops esthetics (the embellishment of an office area), increases workers’ motivation and helps in getting more top performers. Art is also necessary as it helps the development of ergonomics either in products or services and successful solutions always integrate some elegance and smartness. The same happens with sustainability: any design solution requires a nice architecture, the usage of mathematical algorithms, some robustness to warrant confidence, an attractive or charismatic management, etc. As for an ugly car, there is no effective solution that is not esthetically beautiful.
Thus, to implement and achieve significant progresses, the objective is to transpose the benefits and the scientific advances originating from common experiments from non-connected fields and to cross-fertilize them with skills and experience. That is the reason for blending skills of several kinds, e.g. those pertaining to engineering sciences, social and human sciences (SHS), life sciences, physics, etc.
The various aspects of universality show that every single person is immersed in a world that is both simple and complex. In terms of sustainability, and whatever the definition used, man cannot simultaneously embrace all the intrinsic aspects and trends of a system. It is the interactions that are of key importance. As a consequence, the precise and concise process modeling of a complex system is often impossible and avoiding the development of increasingly complicated, unstable and incomprehensible or irrelevant solutions, is therefore necessary. How to proceed will be shown in the book.
I.4. Transdisciplinarity as a mindset
Sociologist Friedrich Nietzsche identified two separate populations in people’s behavior and cultures by distinguishing:
–
Apollonians:
those who preferably use solution approaches based on logic, analytics and a cold assessment of the facts. The rational thinking comes from the Cartesian approach and retains strong influence in Western countries since several centuries.
–
Dionysians:
those inclined to intuition, synthesis and passion. In his works, Stephen Hawking is partly following this so-called Eastern approach. Here, theory is often based on personal conviction.
Both approaches highlight the respective characteristics of our left and right brains, with respect to the principles of asymmetry widely implemented in nature [MAS 15]. There exists, however, another category of people that is sometimes ignored: the “Ulysseans”, who combine the two above inclinations, in transverse fields of competencies, at the borders of several disciplines. As can often be seen, they are able to handle ambiguities and contradictions and to find the best for fit equilibrium. Nevertheless, they often are non-effusive and do not show up. Despite their low audience, they are able to handle the complex concepts of sustainability the best. A prevalent idea in frequent academic and bureaucratic circles is to give credibility, depending on which ideas deserve to be seriously taken into account, to those ideas belonging to the more in depth searches in a given field.
Similarly, we must not forget the vital contribution of those who take the risk to give a “synthetic view of all”. The ability to make transpositions, to reason by analogy and to bring back and adapt advances from outside fields is a real advantage. In this direction the innovation field is the bearer, be it in research, reengineering or sustainability. In this context, many industrial companies and research networks already operate in interdisciplinary topics: they coexist, share and communicate. For instance, in the car industry, the security sector, etc.
On another level, computers can be used to simulate and improve ecological processes or implement communities of adaptive agents, as part of a model of sustainability. Still, we can also consider computers as social beings and use them as complex adaptive systems working in co-adaptation between themselves, and with or without humans. They are able to describe and predict each other’s behavior and to develop synergies within the framework of a governance metasystem. Here, we are on the border of order and disorder, with a control system close to self-organized criticality, with key variables distributed according to power laws, emergence mechanisms, etc. Thus, by analogy, the sustainability science must go hand in hand with the evolution of other sciences, integrate new definitions and paradigms and meet dynamic goals.
I.5. Third idea: reactivity and openness
We are immersed in a multiple cultural, economic, and social environment and neurosciences involve us by providing new openings. As a leading example, IBM is involved in brain computing since the 1990s by combining various life sciences approaches with computer simulation and mathematical modeling. Scientists are identifying how the brain creates awareness of individual objects and how to gain a better understanding of human consciousness.
I.5.1. About the context of sustainability
The context of sustainability is increasingly open, globalized and borderless. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Internet are its pillars of change. Each component of our environment oscillates between “internationalism” and “regionalism”, which means between “universalism” and “relativism”. Thus, we must always be wary of the trend consisting of setting a single and limited approach to a social organism. The following examples clarify the point:
– in industry as in medicine, a virus (computer or influenza) is a common concept. Coming out of nowhere and spreading throughout a whole organism, it generates contamination everywhere, on an international level, propagating at a very high speed through exchange and communications networks;
– during an economic exchange through e-business, an abnormality (or disturbance) relative to an economic situation, an unexpected demand will spread and have unpredictable impacts at the planetary level almost instantaneously. This may happen every day: the September 11th attacks, the economic crisis in Argentina, the Greek debt, etc. As a result, a temporary decline of more than 30% of the global economic activity may be observed within the span of a few days;
– concerning some diseases, half of the planet’s inhabitants are living in developing countries, where infectious diseases are responsible for 50% of deaths. These deaths are essentially due to three major causes: malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis. These diseases travel around the world with increasing speed and ignore borders. Then, the three unities of place, time and action mentioned above are not fulfilled.
At the approach level, we always try to better control epidemic factors and the vectors of the disease (e.g. biting insect) in a broad way to reduce the dissemination of the disturbances. Isolation is also a common practice to avoid any dissemination. But we will also reduce the amplitude of a disease and its consequences through social approaches or the control of shared facilities, etc. Thus, the working methods and their associated tools, the industrial solutions or therapies must remain open with a very broad scope, while looking for local alternatives. We must always be wary of single or limited solutions.
I.5.2. Local or global sourcing for sustainable solutions?
In industry as in medicine, sustainable solutions are often developed with unbeatable price-performance ratio. Highly effective deployment programs are set-up from and with the country that played the leader’s role.
Here we find an interesting booster of international cooperation. A few examples:
– in Japan, improving industrial processes in quality and robotics;
– in Tunisia, developing new information technologies;
– in Cuba, reducing child mortality to the lowest level in Latin America through health care and the care of children;
– in Thailand, fighting against AIDS.
The knowledge and expertise on specific subjects in different countries around the world are both so universal and yet unknown from some, that Western countries are launching huge information collection programs. Through a “bioprospecting” endeavor, samples are taken in various fields – flora, fauna, mushrooms, health, etc. – in poorly explored regions, those with, for example, primary forests or oil slicks.
In terms of sustainability, this allows us to search and develop relevant solutions that are not overdesigned and that are transpositions and adaptations in an own close world of proven solutions developed elsewhere and practiced by other cultures or living species. Globalization highlights a potentially universal source of sustainability: society itself! Needs and seeds of solutions emerge from the society. Moreover, the same society expounds how to proceed when developing a sustainable solution and will challenge it.
In point of fact, most diversified and effective services which fit in a social environment and take into account community citizen’s needs are available somewhere. They can be identified easily and are already adapted to a local environment, to the potential strengths and opportunities within a local community; they are able to cover most of the requirements, while satisfying indirectly the global interest of a whole nation. More than ever, in large international companies, people are asked to “think globally” but act locally, which proves correct in an assertive organization with hierarchical structures. But in an interconnected system where self-organization rules, an ambivalent principle is often observed that compels to think locally to act globally.
Ultimately, the vast agora of research, medical field, or industry is like a huge bazaar: everyone can sell, buy, provide or exchange information on the Internet; as wherever a scam can happen, any possible sort of specificity, need, skill, solution, advice or recommendation can be found on the Web. The Web has become a virtual and borderless super-organism, a swarm composed of industrious bees, each with its own function, capable of sifting through routers a multitude of websites, collecting and synthesizing relevant information, adapting a solution as in culinary arts. Rough products and services are provided to a chef, who turns and transforms them in a multidisciplinary and multicultural melting pot to extract new outstanding properties suitable for satisfying the various needs and demands of a society.
The process involves the integration of structures dedicated to business intelligence, even for sustainability purposes. If one agent is not proactive or does not exploit the advantages within reach, it falls behind a leader, becoming isolated and even disappearing. Nature is deeply sustainable and has also, in part, predator–prey arrangements.
I.6. A challenge: competition and complementarity
Sustainability is an open concept. However, an opening process points to the issue of several competing approaches, theories or sciences. In this section, three examples from computer science, biology and physics will illustrate how this new concept can work.
I.6.1. Process optimization
In the field of life sciences, new challenges related to proteomics appear. Evidently, one can count on the contribution of engineering and computer sciences to facilitate their implementation. Participating in a bioinformatics project commonly calls for engineering and computer experts along with biologists. It is a common yet new organizational pattern. This approach inevitably leads to a situation of dependence: everybody (users, scientists, and staff) is asked to play second roles in such interdisciplinary projects.
Since proteomics is essential to better know how to identify active sites on a molecule, this will help in identifying the different main interactions and the resulting level of internal attraction and repulsion forces associated with a protein. This determines how a function can emerge. Hence, a cooperative and interactive approach is required to combine computer sciences, mathematics or biological skills. Inevitably, some leadership will emerge from an initiative inspired for taking ownership of results issued from other scientific fields and for developing new avenues of development for its own benefit.
The above goes in the direction of better complex systems sustainability. But where is the challenge? For a given problem, this consists of aggregating information specific to another area and determining how an optimal and global order may spontaneously appear or what its global performance may be, but also determining which approach is valid in any domain e.g. construction, logistics. But in terms of measurement, the issue is how to switch from global to local objectives.
The DNA hybridization problem requires a similar approach. There exists a direct link between biology and human–social sciences: in terms of sustainability, one issue is the social impact of new technologies in genetics, or how the alterations made on a person’s genes may affect his/her descendants. This is topical within transgenesis, i.e. the genetic transformation of either an organism or a cell. Indeed, transgenesis is the process of introducing an exogenous gene into a living organism, as an additional and external feature onto a complex assembly. New properties will appear, but with what impact on the offspring? With any side effect on the upper assembly? This question has links with error propagation in complex industrial systems and introduction of errors through correction or enhancement of sophisticated software or service. Further down at the levels of ethics and sustainability, the matter points to more general topics related to transhumanism.
The IBM Montpellier plant acquired a factual expertise in this context during 1980s, when solving plant layout problems, planning, scheduling and sequencing challenges in complex assembly lines involving 80,000 part numbers dedicated to 800 different computer models became necessary. Operation research-based approaches led us to dead-ends and non-consistent solutions, therefore non-sustainable solutions. So-called “smart manufacturing lines” were developed with IBM Research at Yorktown Heights. Simulated annealing [MAS 89] technology was first introduced to accelerate time in solution searching. Then, genetic-based crossover mechanisms were implemented, whose root principle consists of exchanging genetic material among homologous solutions. They resulted in recombining the elements of different solutions, as it is done in nature (genetic algorithms [MAS 97]). At last, manufacturing staff could proceed with full manufacturing line automatizing through computer integrated manufacturing (CIM).
As aforementioned, we can always transpose own approaches from one specific field to another with physics, biology and industry and ask how to pass from a micro to a macro level and vice versa. But also, how to control the transition problem? How to control and manage the rising of faults and defects? How to foster the emergence of self-organized patterns? These are points to be developed on later on.
In sustainability engineering, pieces of solutions are based on the ability of transposing and adapting results and knowledge from one domain to another and operating highly varied synergies, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel in an expensive way. In the area of sustainability, such development process represents a differentiating factor and helps getting a competitive and innovation advantage.
I.6.2. Asymmetry of thought
In the cognition field, links between asymmetry (Code of Matter) and the Code of Thought cannot be ignored. These codes are those detailed in [MAS 15 b] and presented in Figure I.1 below. The main properties of these codes must be highlighted to better understand how to forge a “dictatorship of thought” in a given civilization. Asymmetric information, for instance, is common in computing and in philosophy, politics and religion, where the asymmetry of thought can be considered. Compared to a past understanding, this notion has significantly changed, becoming more complex. The asymmetry is due to three primary causes:
1) Morality, ideology, censorship, deontology or ethics – associated with legal or regulatory sanctions – may “curve” information. It resembles the space-time curvature of general relativity, unless a singularity due to a black hole as in the case of a dictatorship.
2) The approval or disapproval, the prudent or loose silence when thinking in a particular outward way, while the behavior and attitude are contrary to an own inner way of thinking, thus not defending a belief and dodging from lack of courage, etc.
3) Of increasing importance are social networks, which allow free access to a wealth of information. Under the cover of freedom of expression, Web users can say anything about anyone including themselves and can disclose intimate scenes, personal inclinations and thoughts, etc. Anybody can be exposed to public disgrace, where smear and lynching campaigns contribute to destroy a person, a thing equivalent to civic and social censure applied by and to an entire community.
It is certainly possible to stand out a single way of thinking through “eliminating” deviants on behalf of morale or “democratic” principles, then to achieve a kind of useful standardization of the human thought. This is, however, a sort of freedom of expression loss. Examples abound in every country and whatever the communities involved. Raising the question of what sustainability means in such systems is conceivable. Like the freedom of thought, a dictatorship of thought is improper when becoming predominant. But how to define good equilibria as we consider that asymmetries are complementary?
I.6.3. Quantum physics and information theory
Quantum physics is involved in a large number of applications that we use everyday: lasers, microelectronics, medical imaging, GPS, superconductivity, cryptography, etc. It seeds new opportunities: quantum computing, teleportation or even entanglement capabilities for control systems. So far, quantic effects are occurring at micro- and nano-technological levels. Wouldn’t it be intriguing and engaging to call for quantic phenomena in various domains, for instance, decision management science?
