Strategic Modelling and Business Dynamics: A Feedback Systems Approach

4.1. Getting Started

Open the file called 'World of Showers A' in the CD folder for Chapter 4. The opening screen looks like Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1. Opening screen of World of Showers A

4.1.1. Taking a Shower in World of Showers A

Situation: A cool shower in a five-star hotel

You are on a consulting assignment in the South of France. You arrive at your five-star hotel after a long flight and a harassing taxi journey along a crowded motorway near Marseilles in mid-summer. Unfortunately, your cab has no air-conditioning. You are desperate for a cool shower. So you rush to your room. Immediately you set the shower running, without looking particularly closely at the controls. You start to get undressed. Your shoelace becomes knotted and you spend a frustrating two minutes unpicking the tiny knot. By the time you are finished the shower has settled to a steady temperature, though you don't yet know how high or low. You enter the shower cubicle. As you expect, the water temperature is controlled by a tap setting that mixes the hot and cold water supply. You reach for the tap. Press the button labelled 'To Charts and Controls' on the opening screen to see a graph for displaying simulated temperature as shown in Figure 4.2. Below the graph you will see a slide bar to control the tap ...