Systems thinking, working on projects upstream

摘要

Systems thinking is the ability to look at the "big picture," whether dealing with a process improvement project, facility planning project or an organizational analysis project, etc. It means including all of the integrated processes that make up the entire system. For industrial and systems engineers, this often means expanding your view at the beginning of a project to ensure that all of the relevant processes are included, and to not just focus on some of the symptoms. This doesn't mean an unnecessary scope increase, but it does mean all of the cause-and-effect relationships are included, and all suspect processes are examined.