User dissatisfaction with the performance of internal systems design departments is widespread. It is demonstrated here that viewing such a department as a service operations system, operating within a particular market, throws light upon the causes of dissatisfaction and indicates possible...

Many model-based investigation techniques, such as sensitivity analysis, optimization, and statistical inference, require a large number of model evaluations to be performed at different input and/or parameter values. This limits the application of these techniques to models that can be...