Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, June 2002. / "May 2002." / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 112). / by Jyoti Mukherjee. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 84-98). / Aspects of aircraft product uncertainty during system development are examined. Generation of stakeholder value in lean aerospace product development is linked to the reduction or elimination of project risks and uncertainties in areas such as customer requirements, product performance, and issues that may arise later in the product's life cycle. A commercial aircraft system project is explored as a case study. The system is comprised a numerous subsystems developed by separately managed teams. Teams had different approaches to risk identification and mitigation. The relative success of each team is summarized. A framework for creating value by efficiently and effectively managing uncertainty and mitigating risks during aerospace system development is presented. / by Steven M. Bresnahan. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 71). / Product development in the automotive industry has evolved around the design of components. The organization is established around components and people have a very component centric perspective on problem solving. This has led to local optimization of individual components, while the larger system spirals out of control. The penalty is often measured in terms of development time and cost. New programs are given autonomy to make independent choices without regard for what other programs are doing, which leads to a wide variety of architectures put into place. Program managers and functional managers have different prioritizations. Furthermore, new designs are provided by a separate organization from the group responsible for implementation. They have a very different value system and are unaware of the difficulties experienced in the implementation phase. This type of practice leads to programs nearing production deadlines with poorly optimized systems. Engineers must relearn due to the lack of standardization across program. The team absorbs additional resources from within to fix issues prior to launch. The robbing of resources leads to delays in subsequent programs and the cycle repeats itself. These issues are partly cultural, part organizational, part due to lack of understanding of systems engineering. A new organization is designed, which strengthen the systems perspective and give power to a new role in the organization, the Systems Engineer. The Systems Engineer is chartered with global optimization of the entire system, which includes both functional aspects as well as business aspects like resource availability, development cost and time. They are responsible for developing the complete system, from concept to final implementation. The Design Structure Matrix (DSM) shows the boundaries of the system and reveals new areas where the Systems Engineer can influence the design at lower cost to the organization. / (cont.) The Robustness Checklist, standardization and Systems Architecture provide Systems Engineers tools to change from a component mindset to a systems mindset and to optimize the system as a whole. / by Matthew J. Aquaro. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-140). / by Hernan Andres Joglar-Espinosa. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 72). / The open source model for software development has been established as a legitimate competitor to the largest closed source software firms in the world. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the potential impact that the open source model can have with in the information storage industry. The existing literature regarding open source is reviewed and used as a framework for analysis of the storage industry. Additional analysis of the FreeNAS open source storage project is also conducted using the framework to provide context. The research concludes that the information storage industry meets many of the criteria that have been shown to drive adoption of open source software. Some speculation is made regarding the manner in which open source will continue to expand within the storage industry. / by Martin Glynn. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-85). / In estimating a system-specific binomial probability of failure on demand in Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), the corresponding number of observed failures may be not directly applicable due to design or procedure changes that have been implemented in the system as a result of past failures. A methodology has been developed by NASA to account for partial applicability of past failures in Bayesian analysis by discounting the failure records. A series of sensitivity analyses on a specific case study showed that failure record discounting may result in failure distributions that are both optimistic and narrow. An alternative approach, which builds upon NASA's method, is proposed. This method combines an optimistic interpretation of the data, obtained with failure record discounting, with a pessimistic one, obtained with standard Bayesian updating without discounting, in a linear pooling fashion. The interpretation of the results in the proposed approach is done in such way that it displays the epistemic uncertainties that are inherent in the data and provides a better basis for the decision maker to make a decision based on his / her risk attitude. A comparison of the two methods is made based on the case study. / by Spyridon-Damianos Lekkakos. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-98). / by Muraleedharan Gopinathan. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 79). / by Sylvie N. Bokshorn. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-107). / by Steven E. Frey. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2009. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-71). / Rapid advancement in Electronic Communication gives rise to the popularity of Viral Marketing. Mobile Communication, in particular, offers greater potential in the utilization of this Word-of-Mouth phenomenon as a Marketing tool. Researchers have studied Viral Marketing from different perspectives, but little emphasis has been given to the unique characteristic of Mobile Communication as a platform for Viral Marketing. This thesis is therefore intended to explore this unique form of communication. Using the point of view of mobile devices, which are directly related to the users, an analysis on technological evolution in this domain was conducted to study the fit between current Mobile Viral Marketing practices and the technological parameters. To support this study, extensive literature research on Viral Marketing was conducted, along with industry analysis on Mobile Communication and sample cases of known Mobile Viral Marketing practice in the U.S. In general, the analysis found that existing Mobile Viral Marketing strategy mostly mimics the general practice of Word-of-Mouth Marketing and some aspects of this general practice are not suitable for the unique characteristic of Mobile Communication. The study on technological evolution also yielded several patterns on the key parameters of Mobile Device Technology that were used to model the future of this domain. Lastly, using the identified shortcomings of existing strategy and the future depiction of this technology domain, a strategic framework for Mobile Viral Marketing was constructed. This framework is intended to provide businesses with a forward-looking perspective in the utilization of Mobile Communication as a means to spread the words about their products or services. / by Yulia Surya. / S.M.