I know I bang on endlessly about the importance of “stocks”, but they really are important.
Here’s the puzzle – there is no mechanism in the real world for some cause to have an effect at a later time. But we all know that delays happen, so how come?
For it to look like there is a delay, something or things must be stored for some period. That could be a physical thing, like people or products, or could be information, like outstanding orders. And that is what stocks do – store stuff. (They are hugely important beyond the business world too – see my LinkedIn article “What is an asset stock, and why should you care?” )
Some storage times are very short, like the time between placing an online order and getting the order confirmation – some are less short, like waiting for a new hire to be free to join our staff – some are really long, like the lead time to develop a complex product.
Why does this matter for understanding how organisations function and perform? Because things happen – or don’t happen – while important stuff is stored in those stocks.
That new hire may change their mind and not show up; a competing product may come out while ours is still in development, killing its sales potential. And often, we suffer costs or difficulties during that time – the staff team can’t meet the work demands until that new hire shows up, or we incur huge development costs for that product.
So our digital-twin models really need to capture stocks, and not simply insert delays between events.
Understanding how stocks behave is the critical step-3 in our rigorous, practical four-step process for building digital twin living business models. If this is all new to you, why not take the shortest-possible “Essentials” version of our course on how to do this? Go to https://www.sdcourses.com/courses/dynamic-business-modelling-essentials. If you find that useful, the last lesson gets you a 100% refund on upgrading to the full core course.