4 Systems Thinking

Systems & Systems Thinking

Systems are important! They are all around us, some involve technology some don’t. At their most basic all systems can be broken down into three steps. Input->Process->Output. Think of a car factory… Materials come in (input), the factory does a bunch of stuff to the materials (processing), cars come off the production line (output). This is a very large view of a car factory though, if we look closer we will see that in the factory there are lots of small systems attached to each other. Like one small system might make the tires, and that system might be attached to the system that makes the wheels… etc

If we looked at the kettle as a system, we might say that it takes water as an input, starts the boiling process, and delivers boiled water as and output to the teapot…

The output of one system might be considered the input of another system. For example if I speak, for me that is an output, but if you are listening to what I say, to you my speech is an input… it’s all a matter of perspective.

Complex systems with lots of Inputs and outputs put together.