Supporting Small Medium Enterprises planning through the use of a step-by-step System Dynamics model building process

This paper aims to support small medium enterprises (SMEs) in business planning through the use of system dynamics models. In particular, it has been hypothesized that through the use of a step-by-step system dynamics model building process SMEs’ entrepreneurs can better understand the net of cause-and-effect relationships underlying company financial and non-financial results. Such an approach also enables decision makers to improve their understanding about the figures portrayed in a balance sheet. In order to reach such a goal, this study has been carried out through the use of a case-study. The small company investigated is a leather handcraft operating in Indonesia. The paper makes explicit main feedback mechanisms underlying company customer base dynamics adoption process, production and inventory management policies, human resource management practice and machineries production capacity acquisition policy.