The second lesson-from-history article examined the Bentley Priory decision-making environment, at the center of an integrated air defense system, and part of an overall sense-and-respond system used by Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command under Air Marshall Hugh Dowding.
The third lesson-from-history article examined the supply chain run by Whitehall and how Lord Beaverbrook introduced the concepts of agility to improve the efficiency of the supply chain.
The fourth lesson-from-history article examined in more detail the third area, Bletchley Park, the role of intelligence and ultimately knowledge management.
The fifth lesson-from-history article examined in more detail the fourth area, Storey's Gate, the Map Room and the executive dashboard for Churchill.
The sixth lesson-from-history article examined Storey's Gate and the Cabinet War Rooms, a collaborative environment for decision-making environment and its relationship to the Map Room.
In May 1940, Churchill, faced with an imminent invasion, ran a project that integrated four areas into a solution. These were all at different levels of development and maturity and included Bentley Priory, the Whitehall supply chain for fighter production, Bletchley Park and Storey's Gate (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Churchill's Solution of Four Integrated Areas
This seventh lesson-from-history article examines how the basic components of the solution came together and were integrated into a complex sense-and-respond solution.
The goal of the project was to integrate the four areas into a solution that could create an adequate defense to prevent a sea and air invasion, and sustain it over a period of time. To better understand the integration requirements of such a solution, one approach is to lay it out as a simple supply chain, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Solution as a Simple Supply Chain
In simple terms, in order for the armed forces to engage, there is a need for a steady flow of resources and information along the chain. The interactions within the supply chain are based on events, an event being a stimulus (external, internal or triggered by the passage of time) that prompts a reaction. Potential events impacting the supply chain are laid out in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3: Events Impacting the Supply Chain
In such an integration, events are relatively important as they determine how the supply chain should function. Figure 4 shows a more complex representation of Figure 2 with the interchange of information and intelligence, and the supply-and-demand requirements along the chain including feedback loops and a decision-making body to provide guidance.
Figure 4: The Supply Chain Solution with Information Interchanges
The key problems in the integration of the four areas into this solution (or supply chain) lay in understanding how information was created and used, and the interfaces and liaisons into the different chains of command and individual organizational structures. For example:
- What information would be required by RAF Fighter Command?
- How and what type of information would be exchanged by suppliers, producers and manufacturers in the industrial complex or supply chain?
- What were the principal methods of communication or channels?
- Would all the required information be available in a timely manner?
- What feedback information would be passed back into the solution and in what format?
These information exchanges set the constraints by which the solution would be bound.
Taking this a step further, Figure 5 shows the solution as a supply-and-demand chain (see Figure 4) with the four areas from Figure 1 overlaying it.
Figure 5: Supply Chain with the Four Areas Overlaid
Each of four areas in Figure 5 was unique and had its own insights or individuals views, and for this it required different information, for example:
- Bentley Priory, the air chief and staff needed a view of enemy activity and forthcoming attacks, the RAF reserve, fighter wastage, the production of fighters and those fighters available.
- Whitehall, the Ministry of Air Production required horizontal views of the supply chain, fighter production, arms manufacturing, labor force, raw materials (Ministry of Supply), as well as the RAF needs.
- Bletchley Park, the intelligence chiefs and staff required a flow of Enigma information related to enemy activities and the ability to decode, interpret and distribute it. They also acted like a feedback mechanism collecting information after actions were taken and determining the impact of these.
- Storey's Gate, Churchill and his staff, cabinet ministers, and chiefs of staff needed to be in touch with all the areas across the solution. This was a principal community that made the overriding decisions that affected the other areas.
The solution (or system) had to adapt to changing conditions and regulate itself. This required a high level of integration, the rapid interchange of information, and unifying the four areas into a "big picture" that operated as a single adaptive or sense-and-respond solution: According to Wikipedia, " An adaptive system is a system that is able to adapt its behavior according to changes in its environment or in parts of the system itself. A human being, for instance, is certainly an adaptive system; so are organizations and families. Some manmade systems can be made adaptive as well; for instance, control systems utilize feedback loops in order to sense conditions in their environment and adapt accordingly. Robots incorporate many of these control systems. Neural networks are a common type of algorithmic implementation of adaptive systems."
