Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-167). / External advice can be a valuable resource for founders of high technology startup companies. As with any resource, the pursuit and efficient use of the external advice resource is one of the greatest challenges for founders. This thesis examines how the founders of eleven US venture-backed high-tech companies leveraged external advice to their advantage. By aggregating data extracted from case-based interviews, the characteristics of advice are fully understood. In particular, insights are made into the types of advice these business focused founders received, the types of advisors they selected and considered influential to the development of their company and the way they were connected to these influential advisors. Organizing the data by companies' business characteristics enabled further insights to be drawn. Notably, there was a significant difference in a variety of the advice sought by first time founders compared with that of more experienced founding teams. First time founders received broader and more tactical advice than did experienced founders. Furthermore, first time founder's advisors were much more likely to act as coaches, instilling confidence and expending effort to mentor these first-timers into successful CEOs. Silicon Valley advisors and others affiliated with Silicon Valley companies were much more likely to introduce the founders to their influential network, which illustrates the rich entrepreneurial nature of Silicon Valley. There was no statistically significant difference in advice characteristics based on the size of their founding team or on type of their industry. Since the eleven companies are private and thriving, the selected performance metric was the amount of venture capital raised per year of existence. / (cont.) This less than ideal performance data clearly shows a positive correlation between the size and experience of the founding team with company performance. However, no correlation between company performance and industry and geography could be determined. Since the advice characteristics that were correlated with performance were similar to those of large experienced teams, it is reasonable to conclude that none of the advice characteristics are predictors of success. It follows rather that advice characteristics are more a reflection of the companies' business characteristics than itself a predictor of venture success. / by Nick Cravalho. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 81). / Project management is a crucial aspect of product development. There is a need for better project management tools to help product development teams meet their schedule, budget, and technical requirements more accurately with the given uncertainty of each product development project. This thesis is a case study of a Critical Chain implementation. The implementation included the creation of project networks and Critical Chain schedules for each development project studied in this thesis. Once the schedules were in place, the teams developed the products following Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM). The theory behind CCPM has merit but the culture change necessary to achieve a competitive was found challenging in practice. In this thesis, the author studied CCPM from two perspectives: project management and resource management. The team demonstrated both perspectives to an extent, but four months was not enough time. CCPM appeared to improve performance of each project, but the resource management goals of the thesis were not as successful. / James E. Weisheit. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 104-108). / The global automotive industry has entered a stagnating period. Automotive OEMs and their tier suppliers are struggling for business growth. One of the most important strategies is to improve the engineering efficiency in the product development process. The engineering uncertainties have been identified as the main obstacles in the Lean Engineering practices. This study will be focused on the engineering development process of ArvinMeritor Emission Technologies. The lean engineering principles and techniques are applied to the current product development process. The Value Stream Mapping and Analysis method is used to identify the information flow inside the current engineering process. Based on the value stream map, the uncertainties at various development stages in the process are identified. The Design Structure Matrix is used to identify any unplanned design iteration, which results in lower engineering efficiency. The House of Quality is used to prioritize the importance of the iterations. The suggested excel program can effectively evaluate the effect of task duration, probability, impact and learning curve assumption. / (cont.) In order to quantitatively predict the effects of the uncertainties, a System Dynamic model is specifically developed for the current engineering of Emission Technologies. The results clearly indicate the control factors for on-time delivery, efficient resource allocation, and cost reduction. This study has integrated the techniques from system engineering, system project management, and system dynamics. An improved automotive exhaust engineering process is proposed. / by Xitian Fang and Deming Wan. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-69). / by Jared D. Clark. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-117). / Background: CEO's and top management teams of large corporations in developed countries acknowledge that globalization is the most critical challenge they face today. They are also keenly aware that it has become during the past decade to identify internationalization strategies and to choose which countries to do business with. Still most companies have stuck to the strategies' they have traditionally deployed, which emphasize standardized approaches to new markets with some local twists. As a result they are struggling to come up with successful strategies. Aerospace as a sector has traditionally been much localized to the developed world. This makes leveraging globalization even a bigger challenge.Correlations can be drawn to the field of systems engineering, where specific processes and tools are employed to understand the stakeholder interactions and hence treat Aerospace and emerging markets as a system. EA, System Dynamics, clock speed and Game theory are some of the tools that can analyze such a system accounting for unskilled intermediaries and less skilled legal and contract enforcing systems. Results: The thesis suggests a framework that can help organizations identify the institutional voids existing in Emerging markets and Aerospace sector as a system. An introduction to Aerospace manufacturing and the emerging markets help understand the advantages and disadvantages. The framework is able to do a thorough qualitative assessment of all the potential aspects of building a new value chain Further, it shows that the framework is flexible enough to accommodate the unique aspects of Aerospace as an industry and Emerging countries as a market.Conclusions: Despite the fact that the thesis does not develop a full fledged system dynamics model and do a complete case study, it is still a beneficial framework. It provides a sound process that could be used to design and implement robust value chains. / (cont.) It will help organizations understand the institutional differences between countries thus being able to choose the best market to enter, the most optimal strategy and make the most out of operating in Emerging markets. It also leverages each of the system tools such that they deliver most value by providing the best suited magnification lens. / by Rishi Grover. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-75). / William Taylor, III. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-70). / The increasing use of digital design tools and broadband information networks is creating an environment that permits the geographic distribution of design engineers. In order to successfully distributed engineering the consequences need to be understood. Through the examination of records of project execution, this thesis investigates whether the decision to geographically distribute engineers has a measurable impact on the pace of engineering development. A task-based Design Structure Matrix (DSM) was developed and showed that the projects studied were developed using a highly integral process. It is hypothesized the unanticipated consequences of distributing engineers geographically will slow the pace of engineering development to such an extent that costs incurred in protracted engineering development outweigh the benefits. / (cont.) Three findings result from of this study. First, the geographic distribution of design engineers proved to have a negative affect on schedule performance causing distributed projects to overrun their schedules by more than twice as much as localized projects. Second, the development process for the systems studied was found to be highly iterative rather than adhering to the anticipated waterfall model espoused by the process documentation. Third, the level of task aggregation used to study this phenomenon affects the ability to identify the impact of distributed engineering. / by David A. Schiller. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-103). / According to U.S. government surveys, 12% of Americans used taxi service in the previous month' and spent about $3.7 billion a year for cab fare.2 Taxi service is one of the major modes of public transportation. Despite providing services 24 hours a day, driving relentlessly with an empty taxicab in search of passengers and answering dispatch calls instantaneously, taxi service is ranked the most unsatisfactory mode of transportation by the public. Charging higher fares than other major modes of transportation and averaging 10 to 12 hours work day, taxi drivers have a difficult time to earn a sustainable income.Approximately half of all the taxi mileage is paid mileage; this means a significant portion of a taxi's time and fuel is spent on non-revenue generating activities, i.e. without passengers. Current taxi allocation is inefficient. The number of taxis and the geographical service areas which they serve are heavily regulated in most cities. With limited competition and strict regulations, taxi service suffers with customers having to endure long wait times and inferior services. The current taxi systems in most U.S. cities may be greatly improved from their current state. / (cont.) This thesis investigates the factors of inefficiency in the current taxi system, reviews previous taxi efficiency studies, and suggests possible solutions. After extensive literature reviews and field research, a computer simulation model has been built in the MATLAB environment. This computer model tests various attributes that affect logistic optimizations for taxi services. In particular, the effect of taxi fleet size, the quantity of hotspots, and the concentrations of customers at hotspots are analyzed in detail using the model. The metric of interest includes the customers' wait time, taxi revenue, and costs of operations. Results from the computer simulation experiments, field research, and literature review are analyzed and synthesized. Possible solutions are proposed as part of this thesis. / by Sonny Li. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-158). / This thesis explores the limitations of classic models of supply chain management, and proposes a new view based on the concept of value-driven supply chains, and a method of analysis and design based on the concepts of System Architecture. A new supply chain process reference map proposed by Simchi-Levi and Fine is used to frame the architecture. The model revises and extends the de-facto standard reference model in the industry, SCOR 6.0, to reflect the new scope and concerns. A method of analysis based on the understanding of the strategic intent of the firm, the characteristics of the environment in which the firm will operate, and the capabilities of the firm is proposed. Building on analysis frameworks by Shapiro and Fine, the analysis attempts to align the characteristics of the supply chain with the requirements of the different competitive strategies the firm may pursue, and explores environmental constraints through six lenses-regulation, industry structure, business dynamics, technology dynamics, customer preferences, and capital markets. The process reference map is used to frame the analysis of the capabilities of the firm in three dimensions: the production system, product development process, and the distribution system. A prescriptive framework is developed and applied to two case studies: INDITEX (Zara) and General Motors. / by Fernando Cela Díaz. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-94). / by William F. Biberstein. / S.M.