Designing Ultra Large Scale Systems

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Can Lean Inventive Systems Thinking (LIST) Help?

Navneet Bhushan and Karthikeyan IyerCrafitti Consulting Pvt Ltd,(www.crafitti.com) Emails: navneet.bhushan@crafitti.com, karthikeyan.iyer@crafitti.com 1B-401, Akme Harmony,Sarjapur Outer Ring Road,Bangalore 560037, INDIA

Abstract

The challenges of designing the needed Ultra Large Scale (ULS) systems are beyondthe methods and techniques that humanity currently knows of. These systems arecharacterized by extraordinary decentralization, inherently conflicting, unknowable anddiverse requirements, continuous evolution and deployment, heterogeneous,inconsistent, and changing elements, erosion of people/system boundary, normal failuresand new paradigms for acquisition and policy. Today the largest systems being designedare what in the US military parlance are called System of Systems (SoS). The currentcutting-edge SoS are characterized by operational and managerial independence of elements, evolutionary development, emergent behavior and geographic distribution.ULS will be SoS at Internet Scale. This is not a simple matter of extending the currentapproaches as P.W. Anderson in his 1972 classic paper described

More is Different

. Wehave definitely come a long way from that time in our approaches to design systems. Yetpredominantly our approaches continues to be constrained by the analytical and logicalthinking (analogical thinking) that we have perfected over past centuries.The research agenda proposed to design ULS systems includes

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Human Interaction,Computational Emergence, Design of all levels, Computational Engineering, AdaptiveSystem Infrastructure, Adaptable and Predictable System Quality, Policy, Acquisition andManagement. In this paper we explore the suitability of different thinking dimensions fordesigning ULS Systems

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these are Lean Thinking, Inventive Thinking and SystemsThinking. Our hypothesis is that these thinking dimensions need to play a much largerpart than the current analogical thinking that we are used to, in order to design thesehighly complex systems of the future. We propose our framework named the LeanInventive Systems Thinking (LIST) as a possible approach to design such ULS Systems.

Keywords:

Ultra Large Scale Systems, Systems Thinking, Inventive Thinking, LeanThinking, Lean Inventive Systems Thinking.

Introduction

“The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from

those laws and reconstruct

the universe” says P.W. Anderson in his classic paper

titled

“More isDifferent”

[1]

.He further states, “The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the

twin difficulties of scale and complexity. The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementaryparticles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of simple extrapolation of the properties of a fewparticles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research (funda

mental)”. We are standing at an important point in our

history when this century of complexity will lead to extremely large scales systems designed by humans.The scale is the new frontier. These systems called the Ultra Large Scale (ULS)[2]systems, demandsunprecedented capabilities from human minds to design, operate, control and manage these systems.The ULS systems are characterized by increasing interactions, dependencies, couplings or connections innot only the depth of existing dimensions but in increasing the number of connection dimensionsmanifold. The complexity of the ULS systems will be increasing manifold as it demonstrates the complexbehavior associated with complex systems such as a natural eco-system. Dealing with this level of complexity needs new methods of study or solving problems. These methods need to be not only awareof but thrive and exploit very nature of complexity. This nature is characterized by

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indeterminacy, non-linearity, chaos, adaptation, self-organization and distributed intelligence[3].The connotation of difficultor hard to describe leads to a system being viewed as complex. Further complexity can be considered asa contradiction of distinction and connection[3]. Complexity has been defined as two or more distinct parts that are joined in such a way that it is difficultto separate them. This characteristic of complex system led Ray Kurzweil[4]

to state “I know English butnone of my neurons do”. Complexity generates an emergent behavior that is not exhibited individually by

any of the parts, partially or fully. Further the connotation of difficulty in understanding this emergentbehavior of complex systems springs from our classical methods of thinking[3].These methods haveproven their worth in tackling the issues of classical science, problems and issues predominantly in aworld of distinct organization structures where the interactions between uniquely identifiable elementswere clear and unambiguous, relatively few and limited to specific dimensions. These methods werebased on

reductionism or analysis

determinism, dualism, correspondence theory of knowledge and rationality

. However, the classical methods of dealing with mechanical systems and mechanisticworldview pioneered by Aristotle and taken to their zenith by Newton, faltered in explaining the newobservations that started coming in early parts of last century. Further, the lessons from complexityresearch initiated a worldview that real world is not the perfect, geometrical, ordered, predictable,deterministic, rational construct that human mind, labor and ingenuity has created by engineeringperfect geometries that we see in all man-made physical structures. The nature turned out to be anextremely creative and complex system, where dynamism and emergence are the norms. It is withdeeper study of nature of information; man started realizing the inherent complexity of the world that isunfolding.Our research indicates that the successful thinking dimensions that are working successfully in dealingwith complex systems in contrast to the classical analogical thinking are

Lean thinking, Inventive thinkingand Systems thinking

. We propose a framework for design of ULS systems using the integrated LeanInventive Systems Thinking (LIST). The paper is organized into following sections. In Section 2, we brieflydescribe the challenges and needs of Ultra Large Scale Systems design. In Section 3, we describeelements of design coming from Lean Inventive Systems Thinking. In Section 4, possible approaches for

Ultra Large Scale Systems Design as emerging from LIST thinking are described. The paper ends withconclusions and details of future research directions in Section 5.

Ultra Large Scale Systems

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Challenges and Needs

Given the systems that we have built and which are continuing to scale-up in all walks of life, we arecloser to building larger and larger systems. There are needs for such systems to optimally utilize therapidly depleting natural resources and also to function in a highly connected world that we have createdfor ourselves. Most of these systems are, be it web and computing infrastructure, supply chain systems,healthcare infrastructure, military systems or government systems, software based engineering systems.These systems are increasingly complex web of ultra-large, network-centric, real-time, cyber-physical-social systems.The ULS Systems will be system of systems at the Internet scale. Characteristics of ULS systems arisebecause of their scale. These are unprecedented decentralization; inherently conflicting, unknowable,and diverse requirements; continuous evolution and deployment; heterogeneous, inconsistent, andchanging elements; erosion of the people/system boundary; normal failures and new paradigms foracquisition and policy. Table 1 gives a brief view of contrasts between present approaches andcharacteristics of ULS Systems[6].

Table 1: Contrasting the ULS Systems needs and Current ApproachesULS Characteristics Present Approaches

Decentralized Control All conflicts must be resolved and resolved centrally anduniformlyInherently conflicting,unknowable, and diverserequirementsRequirements can be known in advance and change slowly.Tradeoff decisions will be stable.Continuous evolution anddeploymentSystem improvements are introduced at discrete intervals.Heterogeneous, inconsistent,and changing elementsEffect of a change can be predicted sufficiently well.Configuration information is accurate and can be tightlycontrolled. Components and users are fairly homogeneous.Erosion of thepeople/system boundaryPeople are just users of the system. Collective behavior of peopleis not of interest. Social interactions are not relevant.Normal Failures Failures will occur infrequently. Defects can be removed.New paradigms foracquisition and policyA prime contractor is responsible for system development,operation, and evolution.

The ULS systems will be artificial systems hence they differ from natural complex systems in fundamentalways. Unlike natural systems that may evolve because of specific constraints or available paths, theartificial systems are designed at least in principle, with a specific goal or function in mind. As Herbert