I work in a fabrication shop and have done some modeling of some of our processes. I think it's more related to Chaos Theory (the underlying patterns and rhythms aren't truly random because they fall within certain ranges, even if they're unpredictable).
What we are selling on the market as a fabrication shop is our ability to absorb variance and to build things that have never been built before (and will never be built again). Our whole business is built around variance. However, variance is not the same as randomness. If I look at the productivity of one worker, it has a certain rhythm and falls within a certain range, and what makes it chaotic is that no matter what scale I look at (worker, team, dept, shop), the variance is consistent.
Just getting into this line of work and trying to make predictions about it has blown apart a lot of the ways I used to look at the world. The systems I study and work with are beautiful because they're chaotic, and just predictable enough to be relatively stable, but unpredictable enough to stay challenging and interesting.
very interesting. I want to note that for models and simulations "unpredictable" = random. There are many different ways to model random variables so as to get that kind of stability you are referencing (or other kinds of stability) to show in the model. I agree it isnt a perfect match for reality (no model is) but a production stream with variance is a common model
What we are selling on the market as a fabrication shop is our ability to absorb variance and to build things that have never been built before (and will never be built again). Our whole business is built around variance. However, variance is not the same as randomness. If I look at the productivity of one worker, it has a certain rhythm and falls within a certain range, and what makes it chaotic is that no matter what scale I look at (worker, team, dept, shop), the variance is consistent.
Just getting into this line of work and trying to make predictions about it has blown apart a lot of the ways I used to look at the world. The systems I study and work with are beautiful because they're chaotic, and just predictable enough to be relatively stable, but unpredictable enough to stay challenging and interesting.