EFFECTS IMPERFECT INFORMATION ON INVENTORY AND PRODUCTION SYSTEMS.

To evaluate management information systems, one must determine how the quality of information affects decision making and control. Real production-inventory systems always suffer from degraded information flow; inaccuracies and delays are never totally avoidable and are frequently commonplace. A system dynamics model shows how the quality of information affects system behavior and how these effects depend on the relative importance attached to system goals. As one might expect, improving the quality of information is the most important and has the greatest effect on performance. System dynamics is therefore as useful research tool for analyzing the effects of improvements in information systems.