Table Of ContentSystem Architecture and Complexity
Systems of Systems Complexity Set
coordinated by
Jean-Pierre Briffaut
Volume 2
System Architecture
and Complexity
Contribution of Systems of
Systems to Systems Thinking
Jacques Printz
Foreword written by
Daniel Krob
First published 2020 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced,
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© ISTE Ltd 2020
The rights of Jacques Printz to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932472
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-561-9
Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Part 1. The Foundations of Systemics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction to Part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Chapter 1. The Legacy of Norbert Wiener and the Birth
of Cybernetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.1. The birth of systemics: the facts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.1. The idea of integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.1.2. Implementation and the first applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.2. Modeling for understanding: the computer science singularity . . . . . . . . . 21
1.3. Engineering in the 21st Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.4. Education: systemics at MIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter 2. At the Origins of System Sciences:
Communication and Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.1. A little systemic epistemology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2. Systems sciences: elements of systemic phenomenology . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.2.1. Control/regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.2.2. Communication/information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.3. The means of existence of technical objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
vi System Architecture and Complexity
Chapter 3. The Definitions of Systemics: Integration
and Interoperability of Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.1. A few common definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2. Elements of the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.3. Interactions between the elements of the system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.4. Organization of the system: layered architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.4.1. Classification trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.4.2. Meaning and notation: properties of classification trees . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Chapter 4. The System and its Invariants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.1. Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.2. Laws of conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.2.1. Invariance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.2.2. System safety: risks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Chapter 5. Generations of Systems and the System
in the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.1. System as a language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.2. The company as an integrated system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5.2.1. The computer, driving force behind the information system . . . . . . . . 120
5.2.2. Digital companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Part 2. A World of Systems of Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Introduction to Part 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Chapter 6. The Problem of Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.1. An open world: the transition from analog to all-digital . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.2. The world of real time systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
6.3. Enterprise architectures: the digital firm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
6.4. Systems of systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Chapter 7. Dynamics of Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
7.1. Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
7.2. Description of processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
7.2.1. Generalizing to simplify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
7.2.2. Constructing and construction pathways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
7.2.3. Evolution of processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
7.2.4. Antagonistic processes: forms of invariants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
7.3. Degenerative processes: faults, errors and “noise” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Contents vii
7.4. Composition of processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
7.4.1. Antagonistic interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
7.5. Energetics of processes and systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Chapter 8. Interoperability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
8.1. Means of systemic growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
8.2. Dynamics of the growth of systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
8.2.1. The nature of interactions between systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
8.2.2. Pre-eminence of the interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
8.3. Limits of the growth of systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
8.3.1. Limits and limitations regarding energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
8.3.2. Information energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
8.3.3. Limitations of external origin: PESTEL factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
8.4. Growth by cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
8.4.1. The individuation stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
8.4.2. The cooperation/integration stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
8.4.3. The opening stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Chapter 9. Fundamental Properties of Systems of Systems . . . . . . . . . 235
9.1. Semantic invariance: notion of a semantic map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
9.2. Recursive organization of the semantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
9.3. Laws of interoperability: control of errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
9.3.1. Models and metamodels of exchanges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
9.3.2. Organization “in layers” of the models and systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
9.3.3. Energy performance of the interaction between systems . . . . . . . . . . 245
9.3.4. Systemic approach to system safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
9.4. Genealogy of systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
List of Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Foreword
The systems that mankind structures and constructs are at the very heart of the
modern world: in fact, we only need to think of the social and political systems,
complex and industrial systems, monetary and financial systems, energy production
and distribution systems, transport systems, communication systems and, more
generally, the numerous organizational and technological systems that surround us
to realize that “engineered” systems1 are simply everywhere…
All these systems are becoming characterized more and more both by a very high
level of intrinsic complexity and by ever-increasing interdependences. Mastering
these systems has therefore become a real challenge, in a world that is undergoing
profound transformation where they must be able to resist the constant and often
contradictory pressure of citizens and consumers, markets and regulations,
competition and technological innovation, to cite just a few examples of forces that
they are subject to2 in almost all fields of industry and services where complex
systems play a role (aeronautical, automobile, digital, energy, civil engineering, high
tech, naval, railways, mines, spatial, information systems, etc.).
Mastering the complexity of a system fundamentally means being capable of
mastering its integration process – in other words, its construction by interconnection
and/or connection of smaller systems. This process certainly still remains largely
misunderstood insofar as it generates the mysterious phenomenon of emergence: an
1 Living systems are another story and we will limit the scope of our considerations to engineered
systems, in other words to artificial systems (as opposed to natural systems) architectured by
mankind. This already covers a vast spectrum given that technical systems and organizational
systems are both probably going to be included in this conceptual framework.
2 Not forgetting the intrinsic limits of our planet’s physical and environmental resources that
are impossible not to take into account.
x System Architecture and Complexity
integrated system will effectively always have new properties – known as “emerging”
properties – which cannot easily be obtained or expressed with its basic building
blocks.
To thoroughly understand this last concept, let us consider, as a simple example,
a wall that is only made of bricks (without mortar to bind them). A simple systemic
model of a brick can then be characterized by:
– functional behavior consisting, on the one hand, of providing reaction forces
when mechanical forces act on the brick and, on the other hand, of absorbing rays
of light;
– internal behavior provided by three invariant states: “length, width and height”.
In the composition of brick models like these, a wall will simply be a network of
bricks bound by the mechanical action/reaction forces. But a wall like this can
mechanically only have functional behavior consisting of absorbing rays of light.
However, it is clearly not the usual behavior of a wall, since the existing holes in the
walls (for windows) that must allow light to pass through must be taken into account!
We will also observe that it is difficult – and probably in vain – to attempt to express
the shape of a wall (which is one of its typical internal states) as a function of the
length, the width and the height of bricks that make it up. We are therefore obliged to
create a dedicated, more abstract, systemic model, to specifically model a wall when
we want to express its real properties. In systemic terms, this is expressed by observing
that the wall properties such as “allow light to pass through” or wall characteristics
such as its “shape” are properties and emerging characteristics for the wall, meaning
that they can only be observed at the scale of the “wall” system and not at the scale of
its “brick” sub-systems and that they therefore emerge from the integration process of
“brick” sub-systems which lead to the “wall” system. This mechanism of emergence is
in fact a universal characteristic of systems: every system always has emerging
properties in the way that we have just explained.
These considerations can appear to be logical, or even naive, but unfortunately
we can only observe in practice that their consequences are generally not
understood, which leads to numerous problems with quality and a lack of control
that is observed in numerous modern complex systems. Most engineers and
decision-makers effectively continue to think that control of the components of an
integrated system is sufficient to control the system overall. However, the very
nature of the integration mechanism requires not just directors to be in charge of
components when an integrated system needs to be designed: it is also essential to
entrust the high level integrative model for the system under consideration to a
specific director. This is the key role of a system architect, which unfortunately
often does not exist in most industrial organizations, as strange as this may seem for
anyone who is conscious of the underlying systemic fundamentals!
Foreword xi
Considering the integration of a heterogeneous complex system, the resultant of
the interaction of several homogeneous systems, necessarily requires transverse
reasoning, constructing models of a new type that capture the emergence by
coherently integrating the parts of each homogeneous model that constitutes an
overall systemic model. Yet it must be observed that nothing prepares us for this
new paradigm of systemic reasoning, which calls for bringing together different
expertise of extremely varied nature and to surpass traditional storage of the
organization of knowledge, although we have known for a long time3 that we cannot
optimize a system as a whole by optimizing each of its sub-systems.
The emergence of a true science of systems – systemics – that is capable of
rigorously tackling the numerous problems that are presented by the design and
management of the evolution of modern complex systems is therefore an urgent
requirement if we want to be able to bring satisfactory answers to the numerous,
profoundly systemic challenges that humanity is going to have to respond to at the
dawn of the third millenium. This emergence is, of course, not easy because it can
easily be understood that the development of systemics is confronted mechanically
by the set of classic disciplines that all attempt to provide part of the required
explanations for understanding the system and which therefore do not naturally
appreciate a new discipline attempting to encapsulate them in a holistic approach.
This book by Jacques Printz is therefore an extremely important contribution to
this newly emerged scientific and technical discipline: it is effectively primarily one
of the very rare “serious” books published and which provides a good introduction
to systemics. It effectively provides an extremely wide view of this field, picking up
a lead from system architecture in other words by the part of systemics that is
interested in the structure of systems and in their design processes, which allows
each and every one of us to understand the issues and the problems related to
systemics. We can therefore only encourage the reader to draw from the essence of
Jacques Printz’s master book which combines reminders of past development that
explain how systemics has emerged, an introduction to the key concepts of
systemics, and practical examples that allow the nature and scope of the ideas that
are presented to be wholly understood.
However, it will not be possible to easily cover the entire perimeter of systemics
because it is too broad a subject. Many other areas could in fact be subjects of other
books: system dynamics, system sizing and optimization, system evolution
trajectories, the design of homogeneous system families, agile and collaborative
approaches for system development, the governance of systems, etc. Readers who
3 This result is due to Richard E. Bellmann in an article on optimal control dating from 1952. He
showed that only the systems that can be optimized by parts are linear systems, a class to which
no complex system belongs in practice.
