The phrase "devise a model" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to create a method or system for accomplishing a task or understanding data. For example, "We need to devise a model for understanding the election results in order to make an effective plan for our campaign."
They must – like everyone else – devise a model for pounds, shillings and pence that works.
The department would also be required to devise a model outdoor lighting ordinance and distribute it to local governments.
The alternatives taking decades to devise a model set of guidelines, acting randomly, or doing nothing all are unacceptable.
The Home Office has been struggling for some time to devise a model of "Britishness" to which immigrants seeking British citizenship should aim.
It is high time that the world's best economists devise a model for national economies to make the transition from central planning to market economies.
Theorists agree that they would have to jump through hoops to devise a model in which inflation made the universe big enough for galaxies, but not too big.
The researchers devised a model that then extrapolated the costs of conservation to all threatened bird species.
One of those Chicagoans, Milton Friedman, an adviser to Goldwater, devised a model for a negative income tax.
Dr Gay and Dr Leibler have devised a model to explain why the force behaves this way.
I and colleagues at the Social Care Institute for Excellence have devised a model that draws on practice in aviation, health and other high-risk areas.
Researchers at Yale, Harvard, Oxford, and the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics have devised a model for explaining the attraction and repulsion between objects as waves rise and fall around them.
