Interactive models

Simulations

Adjust the inputs and watch the system respond. Each simulation isolates one concept from the articles — an objective function, a constraint, a routing heuristic — so you can see how it behaves rather than just read about it.

AI and Decision-Making

The Humphrey Trap — Modelling Fluency Against Accuracy in AI Output

Turn up how articulate the advice is, turn down how carefully it is checked, and watch the gap between confidence and correctness open up.

Open simulation

Open Systems and the Limits of Prediction — An Interactive Model

A closed model versus a match that reacts to being predicted. More data narrows the first and cannot fix the second.

Open simulation

Systems Thinking and Decision-Making

Analysis Paralysis — Clocks, Clouds and the Cost of Waiting for Certainty

Commission more analysis, hold another meeting, run a thousand simulations. Then watch the clock, because not deciding is also a decision.

Open simulation

Stakeholder Objectives — Misalignment, Side Quests and Invalid Goals

Get Bob through the day without learning the score. Three different failure modes are waiting, and stakeholder management advice usually only recognises one.

Open simulation

Compound Probability — Why Programme Plans Fail Like Accumulators

Set ten dependencies at 90% each and watch the overall chance of success collapse. Then couple the failures together and watch it get worse.

Open simulation

Work as Imagined vs Work as Done — An Operational Diagnostic

Four questions about how your organisation really runs, and an honest answer about which Slade Prison archetype is in charge.

Open simulation

Departmental Optimisation — When Every Department Is Right and the Business Loses

Give Sales, Warehouse, Transport and Planning what each of them reasonably wants, then look at whole-system performance.

Open simulation

Systems Thinking and Product Management

Theory of Constraints — A System Dynamics Model

An interactive stock-and-flow model showing how queues accumulate, constraints dominate, and local optimisation can make the wider system worse.

Open simulation

Transport Optimisation

Weighted Objective Functions — An Interactive Transport Planning Model

Change what the planner is told to value, and watch the “best” route plan change with it. An objective function is a policy decision disguised as arithmetic.

Open simulation

Clarke-Wright Savings — An Interactive Vehicle Routing Simulator

Step through a 1964 routing heuristic one merge at a time and watch out-and-back trips collapse into sensible shared runs across West Yorkshire.

Open simulation

Order Clustering — Comparing K-Means, DBSCAN and Graph Partitioning

Four ways of deciding which orders belong together, on the same set of orders. The grouping you choose constrains every route that follows.

Open simulation

Two-Opt and Three-Opt — An Interactive Route Improvement Simulator

Untangle a crossing route one swap at a time, then watch the algorithm stall on a hill it cannot see past.

Open simulation

Simulated Annealing — An Interactive Route Optimisation Simulator

Let the optimiser accept a worse route on purpose, control how long it is allowed to do that, and see whether the gamble pays off.

Open simulation

Tabu Search — An Interactive Route Optimisation Simulator

Give the optimiser a memory instead of a coin. Watch a greedy search cycle forever, then watch a short forbidden-move list break the loop.

Open simulation

Genetic Algorithms for Routing — An Interactive Evolution Simulator

Stop improving one plan and start breeding a population of them. Includes the permutation trap that breaks naive crossover.

Open simulation

Ant Colony Optimisation — An Interactive Routing Simulator

Nobody plans the route. Dozens of simple ants each try one, the good attempts leave a stronger trail, and a dominant route emerges from accumulated evidence rather than from a planner.

Open simulation

Large Neighbourhood Search — An Interactive Routing Simulator

Destroy part of a respectable route plan, repair it, and see whether a better structure emerges.

Open simulation

Logistics

Empty Miles — An Interactive Causal Loop Diagram

A Senge-style causal loop diagram with adjustable force strength, showing how a freight system shifts between avoidable waste and structural constraint.

Open simulation