Abstract for:Back to Basics: Fundamental building blocks of SD and OR

This paper has a simple premise: there are basic principles of stocks and flows that managers should observe to ensure that they make sound decisions in practice. Often times when managers get things wrong, ad compromise company’s profits, they do so by neglecting such basic principles. Recently,

Ghaffarzadegan and Larson (2018) propose that including feedback processes in operations research (OR) models can lead to significant improvements. Our research supports their claim and suggests that even without considering feedback processes, proper understanding of basic stocks and flows (SF) and their dynamics can yield powerful insights. In that sense, our message is well aligned with that of Homer (1997) that a “potent stock and flow structure” can lead to compelling insights.