Book Reuiews 211

is limited to Dick Muther’s ‘Closeness ratings’. Line balancing is limited to a description of the ‘cycle time’ concept. And location planning is limited to ‘locational break-even analysis’. Aggre- gate planning is mainly based upon ‘graphical and charting techniques’, etc., etc.. . . For some chapters (inventory, queuing) a set of mathematical for- mulae is provided, but without proof. A few ap- pendices with more quantitative emphasis are available but even these are very elementary (e.g. primal simplex method, discounted cash flow, learning curves and simulation).

Notwithstanding this criticism, the book is a good introductory text book for undergraduate students in business. The writing style is clear, the material is well organized, the learning objectives are well defined, and concepts and techniques are presented in a way that they are easy to grasp.

As such, most parts are excellent introductory texts (e.g. M.R.P.). The book also contains more examples, solved problems and end-of-chapter problems than most other books. Many chapters have a short reading or a case study for class discussion or homework assignment.

However, there is a lack of depth of coverage. This may not be an obstacle for an introductory course with business students. But I would not suggest this book to management science or en- gineering students.

Ludo F. GELDERS K. U. Leuven

Leuven, Belgium

Lynton GRAY and Ian WAITT (Eds.)

Simulation in Management & Business Education: The Proceedings of the 1981 Conference of SAGSET, The Society for Academic Gaming and Simulation in Education and Training

Volume 7 in: Perspectives on Academic Gam- ing & Simulation, Kogan Page. London. 1982. 192 pages, f14.95

The Proceedings of a conference are not an ideal basis for a book. Firstly, papers are prepared individually and do not automatically make a whole: the editors have recognised this by in- cluding other contributions and by rationalising the papers into two groups; descriptions of games,

and theory, design, use and evaluation. Secondly, there is a lack of critical analysis and comparative judgment; some will have taken place in con- ference and papers are often oriented toward seek- ing this. rather than to normal standards for publi- cation. Proceedings are a valuable record for those who attend a conference: others must read be- tween the lines.

Whether this book contains ideas of value for operational researchers may depend on whether their motivation for developing learning games, and the setting for these games, fits one of the game frameworks discussed. The first ten papers describe games that examine conference activity; meetings and staff management; risks and gam- bles; political awareness; elements of law; decision making in committee; power in organisations; land administration; economics; and teaching English as a foreign language. It is worth noting that four of these have no references to other work, and that only one paper from the six earlier books of this series gets a mention, and a critical one at that.

If other people’s games do not help much, what * is offered by more theoretical papers? Here we

have studies of ‘real-time’ models to enhance credibility; of whether models are real enough; of the skills and attitudes of teachers using games; of communication between professionals and lay- men; of developing simulations for pilot training; of the rationale behind the use of management games; of the evaluation of the stimulation of mental and emotional processes; of methods for translating from the real to the game world; of aiding creativity; and of the philosophy underlying Popper’s concept of the need for theory to be falsifiable. Three references to papers in the six other books of the series are given.

No pattern emerges: game-makers seem to rely mainly on their own areas of expertise and on common-sense. Although the material in this book is interesting-because games are interest- ing-learning games, and the more prescriptive teaching games, lack an underlying methodology. 4 classification of types. including techniques, de- ,gree of reality, purpose in generic terms, degree of interactivity. and so on. should be attempted. SAGSET might devote a conference to this, seek- ing to formalise guidelines for game design, or a categorisation of what is available, or an indi- cation of the principles behind a game so that its concepts can be translated to other settings. Such

212 Book Reviews

a move towards a theory of learning games might justify the proposed change in SAGSET’s title, from ‘Academic’ to ‘the Advancement of.

The evidence of this book implies a highly subjective process with no clear discipline: an indi- vidual game may meet its purpose with only the game designer and the players learning much of consequence. I do not believe if offers enough to be generally recommended. Some learning-game designers might spot something that is important to them, but the odds are against them. Libraries which aim to serve the gaming community may take it on principle. At fl5, value for money is questionable. I hope I am being pessimistic: cer- tainly, nothing I have said is intended to be critical of the editors or of the contributors, and my comments will, I hope, be seen by them as con- structive.

Ken BO WEN Royal Holloway College

Egham, United Kingdom

Hans LINNEMANN, Jerrie de HOOGH, Michiel A. KEYZER and Henk D.J. van HEEMST

MOIRA: Model of International Relations in Agri- culture

Volume 124 in: Contributions to Economic Analy- sis, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1979, xv + 379 pages

There is a difference between the animal and plant communities which take no care about their future (e.g. yeast), and human civilization. The subject of the book-MOIRA-is a document of it.

MOIRA (Model of International Relations in Agriculture) is a dynamic model of the world developments concerning agriculture. It studies possibilities of food production. For this purpose its structure reflects a plentitude of physical, chem- ical, biological and economic factors, which in- fluence agricultural production. The model is a finite automaton working with a one year time step and having complicated inner states and tran- sition function. The model has been implemented and run as a simulation model at computers.

The first part of the book is dedicated to the collection of information about the real world and

to the formulation of the rules needed in the model. The second part is a description of the model MOIRA. The last part is oriented to the illustration of the MOIRA work and the results it gives: its conception enters into a narrow relation- ship with the basic ideas of the control of the world’s agricultural production and its trends.

An essential contribution of the book lies in a great aggregation of hundreds of factors which influence food production development: thus MOIRA is a source of really new information, giving more than a general image obtained from more simple models. The computer model can give a great deal of stimuli for world agricultural policy and be a source of nontrivial pieces of knowledge about the dynamics of the mechanism of the world agricultural system.

Evien KINDLER Charles University

Prague, Czechoslovakia

A. DUSEK Research Institute of

Agricultural Technology Prague, Czechoslovakia

Kjell B. ZANDIN

MOST Work Measurement Systems

Volume 3 in: Industrial Engineering, Marcel Dek- ker, New York, 1980, xviii + 204 pages, Sfr.45.00

Since the twenties ‘predetermined motion time systems’ (PMTSs) have been developed with the purpose of providing industrial engineers with tools for describing and evaluating existing, and design- ed operation methods, and for determining relative operation times. The PMTSs that are used most nowadays in industry and elsewhere are probably MTM-1 (published in 1948) and the family of MTM-l-based, less detailed ‘higher level’ systems, that are faster than MTM-1, but also less accurate in most cases. A distinction is made between gen- eral, functional (i.e. adapted to a specific type of activity, for instance clerical work), and specific systems.

The MOST system, the subject of Zandin’s book, concerns a general higher level MTM-l- based PMTS that was introduced in 1975, a char-