Measuring the performance of public agencies and programmes is essential to ensure that citizens ... more Measuring the performance of public agencies and programmes is essential to ensure that citizens enjoy quality services and that governments can be sure that taxpayers receive value for money. As such, good performance measurement is a crucial component of improvement and planning, monitoring and control, comparison and benchmarking and also ensures democratic accountability. This book shows how the principles, uses and practice of performance measurement for public services differ from those in for-profit organisations, being based on the need to add public value rather than profit. It describes methods and approaches for measuring performance through time, for constructing and using scorecards, composite indicators, the use of league tables and rankings and argues that data-envelopment analysis is a useful tool when thinking about performance. This demonstrates the importance of allowing for the multidimensional nature of performance, as well as the need to base measurement on a s...
... The computational power of the model may help to reduce the complexity faced by the people ta... more ... The computational power of the model may help to reduce the complexity faced by the people tasked with ... The fourth archetype of Figure 2 is labelled as modelling to provide insights, and applies to situations close to ... Towards a theory of model use: a preliminary investigation. ...
Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics, 1999
A successful simulation still requires the user to have good simulation knowledge and well develo... more A successful simulation still requires the user to have good simulation knowledge and well developed modeling skills despite a large number of simulation software products available to users. This paper presents the design principles and implementation of a layered modeling system known as General-Purpose user-defined Modeling System (GPMS) which provides the user with multiple accesses to build a simulation model at three different levels of knowledge and skills. It does this by purpose-designed GPMS simulation language, which is briefly described in this paper.
The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1995
The three-phase approach provides a simple and robust way to develop discrete computer simulation... more The three-phase approach provides a simple and robust way to develop discrete computer simulation programs. Object-orientation allows system developers to develop software which can be extended and also makes it impossible for important variables within a software system to be tampered with. This paper shows how the two approaches can be usefully combined and discusses the development of a simulation library, written in C++ and based on these ideas. Limitations of both approaches are also discussed.
Proceedings of the 34th conference on Winter …, 2002
... The functions that we reuse in this way are usually very specific in their functionality and ... more ... The functions that we reuse in this way are usually very specific in their functionality and are fine grained, which enables us to check that the function is performing as required. SIMULATION SOFTWARE AND MODEL REUSE: A POLEMIC Michael Pidd ...
It is now widely accepted that strategy-making and policy development require both rational analy... more It is now widely accepted that strategy-making and policy development require both rational analysis and an ability to work with insights that are sometimes hard to pin down. Can operational research (OR) contribute to this process in which soft and hard are interwoven? Simon's longstanding distinction between substantive and procedural rationality is helpful in addressing this question. Undoubtedly, OR has made major contributions to strategy development, although there has been a marked tendency to argue for even greater use of substantive rationality. In addition, some soft OR methods are also successfully used in strategy development as ways to provide procedural rationality. Add to this the suggestion of Sagasti that metaphor and language are powerful tools in strategizing, then there is a powerful case for the greater use of OR/management science is strategy development and policy-making.
It is probably true, at least in part, that each generation assumes that the way it operates is t... more It is probably true, at least in part, that each generation assumes that the way it operates is the only way to go about things. It is easy to forget that different approaches were used in the past and hard to imagine what other approaches might be used in the future. We consider the symbiotic relationship between general developments in computing, especially in software and parallel developments in discrete event simulation. This shows that approaches other than today’s excellent simulation packages were used in the past, albeit with difficulty, to conduct useful simulations. Given that few current simulation packages make much use of recent developments in computer software, particularly in component-based developments, we consider how simulation software might develop if it utilized these developments. We present a brief description of DotNetSim, a prototype component-based discrete event simulation package to illustrate our argument.
Measuring the performance of public agencies and programmes is essential to ensure that citizens ... more Measuring the performance of public agencies and programmes is essential to ensure that citizens enjoy quality services and that governments can be sure that taxpayers receive value for money. As such, good performance measurement is a crucial component of improvement and planning, monitoring and control, comparison and benchmarking and also ensures democratic accountability. This book shows how the principles, uses and practice of performance measurement for public services differ from those in for-profit organisations, being based on the need to add public value rather than profit. It describes methods and approaches for measuring performance through time, for constructing and using scorecards, composite indicators, the use of league tables and rankings and argues that data-envelopment analysis is a useful tool when thinking about performance. This demonstrates the importance of allowing for the multidimensional nature of performance, as well as the need to base measurement on a s...
... The computational power of the model may help to reduce the complexity faced by the people ta... more ... The computational power of the model may help to reduce the complexity faced by the people tasked with ... The fourth archetype of Figure 2 is labelled as modelling to provide insights, and applies to situations close to ... Towards a theory of model use: a preliminary investigation. ...
Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics, 1999
A successful simulation still requires the user to have good simulation knowledge and well develo... more A successful simulation still requires the user to have good simulation knowledge and well developed modeling skills despite a large number of simulation software products available to users. This paper presents the design principles and implementation of a layered modeling system known as General-Purpose user-defined Modeling System (GPMS) which provides the user with multiple accesses to build a simulation model at three different levels of knowledge and skills. It does this by purpose-designed GPMS simulation language, which is briefly described in this paper.
The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1995
The three-phase approach provides a simple and robust way to develop discrete computer simulation... more The three-phase approach provides a simple and robust way to develop discrete computer simulation programs. Object-orientation allows system developers to develop software which can be extended and also makes it impossible for important variables within a software system to be tampered with. This paper shows how the two approaches can be usefully combined and discusses the development of a simulation library, written in C++ and based on these ideas. Limitations of both approaches are also discussed.
Proceedings of the 34th conference on Winter …, 2002
... The functions that we reuse in this way are usually very specific in their functionality and ... more ... The functions that we reuse in this way are usually very specific in their functionality and are fine grained, which enables us to check that the function is performing as required. SIMULATION SOFTWARE AND MODEL REUSE: A POLEMIC Michael Pidd ...
It is now widely accepted that strategy-making and policy development require both rational analy... more It is now widely accepted that strategy-making and policy development require both rational analysis and an ability to work with insights that are sometimes hard to pin down. Can operational research (OR) contribute to this process in which soft and hard are interwoven? Simon's longstanding distinction between substantive and procedural rationality is helpful in addressing this question. Undoubtedly, OR has made major contributions to strategy development, although there has been a marked tendency to argue for even greater use of substantive rationality. In addition, some soft OR methods are also successfully used in strategy development as ways to provide procedural rationality. Add to this the suggestion of Sagasti that metaphor and language are powerful tools in strategizing, then there is a powerful case for the greater use of OR/management science is strategy development and policy-making.
It is probably true, at least in part, that each generation assumes that the way it operates is t... more It is probably true, at least in part, that each generation assumes that the way it operates is the only way to go about things. It is easy to forget that different approaches were used in the past and hard to imagine what other approaches might be used in the future. We consider the symbiotic relationship between general developments in computing, especially in software and parallel developments in discrete event simulation. This shows that approaches other than today’s excellent simulation packages were used in the past, albeit with difficulty, to conduct useful simulations. Given that few current simulation packages make much use of recent developments in computer software, particularly in component-based developments, we consider how simulation software might develop if it utilized these developments. We present a brief description of DotNetSim, a prototype component-based discrete event simulation package to illustrate our argument.
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Papers by M. Pidd