It is necessary in any systems approach that the decision maker have access and accept the results of the analysis. The lack of measurement, records and definition are being corrected in pork production. The adoption and use of record-keeping systems by producers and the development of production and financial standards with leadership from NPPC will minimize these difficulties. Attempts to work with the size and complexity of the pork production system usually leads to the use of computer simulation modeling. Modeling places within the grasp of the human mind a biological and economic description that would otherwise be too complex to be comprehensible.
Simulation offers prediction and prediction provides the opportunity for planning and control.
Any technique or method is also subject to overuse through enthusiasm or abuse through lack of experience. For pork production these diverting effects may be reduced in the application of a systems approach to efforts directed toward solving problems rather than toward looking for problems where a systems approach can be applied. Also, caution should be taken against becoming consumed with modeling and attempting to make real life fit the simulation rather than vice versa. The pork production system is composed of animals, buildings, nutrition and environmental conditions that all interact. DePetrie et al.