The Unified Systems Theory (TM) Story

Part 1 -- Early 1990's - The Beginning

While working on his docoral research in Artificial Intelligence, a young engineer, Patrick Dessert, gained insight to the the complexity of things, and how intelligent behavior seemed to emerge out of chaos. He developed a simple, yet robust, algorithm that merged several fields of Artificial Intelligence to develop an Artificial Life technology which created virtual "problem solvers" in simple domains.

With his Ph.D. work behind him, Dr. Dessert started working on applying this research to the complex system of product manufacturing. Beginning with small automotive part manufacturers, Dr. Dessert steadily worked to extend his Ph.D work to handle the complexity of manufacturing. Initially the goal of the work was to be able to repeatably and effectively analyze a manufacturing operation and develop a prioritized list of improvements that could be made through people, process, or technology changes. Dr. Dessert's technology was a closed form solution to what is considered a very random chaotic process. The technology was called the Unified Manufacturing Theory, and was applied successfully in many manufacturers ranging from small component suppliers to Ford and Chrysler.

This work became the basis for the "Greater Operations" serviceline of PDM Consulting, and still today, helps companies optimize the cost the efficiency with which they convert sales to "bottom line" profits.

Part 2 -- New Millinium - From The UMT to The Unified Systems Theory

Around Y2K, Dr. Dessert became aware that the UMT was more robust than many Artificial Intelligence technologies such as Expert Systems, Case-Based Reasoning, or Artificial Neural Networks. There was something that the UMT had tapped into that gave it a power to project complex system performance and thus predict how to optimize those systems. To test the power of the Unified Manufacturing Theory, Dr. Dessert began working with the design teams of Chrysler and many other automotive manufacturers to understand the way Systems Engineering in large companies was performed. The UMT was used to model and analyze the heavily "social" design process in order to improve budgetary, timing, and quality resulting from design programs.

Further, this work began to look at the customer acceptance of products as a success criteria of the design process.The Unified Manufacturing was modified suprisingly little to work in this broader domain. Dr. Dessert compared manufacturing to a game of baseball where you knew where and when the plays were going to take place and inclusion of the design process was moe along the line of a game of hockey where the play could occur anywhere at anytime.

To reflect that the UMT had grown beyond manufacturing, it was rechristened the Unified Systems Theory (UST).

It was applied in the creation of a new generation of electrical architecture that was a product supported by over 30 automotive manufacturers and the US Army.

This work became the basis for the "Greater Topline" service line. This service line of PDM Consulting leverages the UST to develop disruptive new products that grow corporate "topline" revenue.

Part 3 -- On to the Enterprise and Beyond

In the following years Dr. Dessert earned his Master's in Business Administration in Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. This brought the UST to the economic and financial fields. In the last 15 years the UST has been successfully applied to many areas of finance. Investment, turn-around, and acquisition are great examples of domains in which the UST has provided significant value.

An interesting case of the power of the UST was in April of 2007, which analyzing the auto industry as a whole, Dr. Dessert predicted in an interview in the newspaper that the auto industry had 18 months before a crash. As predicted by the UST, in October of 2008, the auto industry did collapse, which was caused by the combination of self-inflicted finanical mismangement, predicted demand downturn, and the systemic interconnected nature of the industry.

This work has become the basis of the "Greater ROI" service line of PDM Consulting.

Over the last 15 years the UST has been applied to optimize a variety of complex systems. From modeling and analyzing the complexity in the human brain in the task of learning, to development of political campaigns, to the modeling and quanitification of the benefits of Social Networks.

Out of this work, two enterprises have developed. The first, of course, is PDM Consulting, which is a service company which provides and outreach to help make companies greater. The second is PDMC Ventures, which is a private equity firm, which uses the UST and service lines of the UST to guide investments of startup companies.

For more information, please contact us here