A quantitative description of complex adaptive system: The self-adaptive mechanism of the material purchasing management system towards the changing environment

Abstract

This paper demonstrates a new interpretation of the material purchasing management system (MPMS) from the perspective of complex adaptive systems (CAS). Within the framework of CAS, the authors design the self-adaptive mechanism of the MPMS responding to the changing environment, such as the change of the price, by using risk measurement theory, modern portfolio theory (MPT) and the information of the material’s modifying priority. As a bottom-up systems view, CAS focuses on the individual level and studies system’s overall complexity by analyzing the mutual competition and adaptation among the individuals. This paper demonstrates a quantitative description of CAS by discussing theMPMS which can be viewed as a kind of CAS, and makes numerical simulations of Daqing oilfield MPMS. Compared to the benchmarks, the authors set the simulations show that the self-adaptive mechanism adapts well to the change of the material’s market price. Hence, this paper accomplishes a numerical simulation of CAS’s quantitative self-adaptive mechanism responding to the environment’s change.