Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 83). / The automotive low volume niche vehicle marketplace is growing, evidenced by increasing media coverage and fierce competition between original equipment manufacturers. Development of niche vehicles must be lean and therefore fast to beat competitors and keep customers interested. This thesis case studies a niche vehicle product development organization which has survived within a major original equipment manufacturer for over 11 years. This work defines niche vehicles and presents process things gone right and things gone wrong which have been identified through detailed interviews. The organization's current product development enhancement strategy is also summarized. Product development value stream mapping is used to identify process improvement opportunities for leaning the major engineering activities of the niche vehicle organization. Current state maps and desired future state maps are presented. Recommendations for approaching the desired future state are discussed. Process improvement opportunities outside of engineering are identified which work toward improving the cycle time of the overall product development process. Finally, all of the recommendations are summarized and rated on their difficulty of implementation and suggestions for future research are presented. / by Celeste D. Kupczewski. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 90). / Recent electrical architectures of land vehicles have shown a marked increase in networking and integration of electronic controls into traditionally electro-mechanical devices, which results in complex functional interactions throughout the electrical system. This trend often drives a large system change that modifies the engineering roles of the component level engineer and also creates a need for an evolution to a vehicle level systems engineering approach. In this paper, a claim was put forth that without a certain level of inherent discipline in place and functional, no successful large system change can occur. Inherent discipline was decomposed into three parts: process, personal, and organizational disciplines. Each of these was described and relationships between them were investigated. The correlation between parenting and organizational discipline was explored. A case for the business value of inherent discipline was made by examining two examples; one of organizational progress and one of manufacturing progress. Then a case study of an emerging large system change, feature ownership, was presented. Details on the engineering roles required for feature based development at each of the hierarchical levels of the electrical system were presented. / (cont.) Using the Design Structure Matrix as a tool, the interactions of the development process used for implementing distributed features were analyzed. Elements of inherent discipline required for a successful implementation of feature ownership were identified, as well as feedback from engineers in the organization implementing this large system change. The criticality of organizational discipline, in particular, to the feature ownership change initiative was emphasized. Recommended next steps for process, personal, and organizational discipline were detailed and possible effects of lack of discipline on feature ownership were postulated. The three types of discipline form a balance for the large system change initiative. The absence of any of the three can have a detrimental effect on the progress and effectiveness of the change, leading to poor quality, application or implementation of the change. / by Robin L. Rivard. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-64). / Risk management is an essential component any project. Traditional tools of risk management, however, tend to focus solely on the three traditional project elements-cost, schedule, and technical-ignoring the broader environmental issues which also play a part in project success. Without a knowledge and understanding of these additional factors, incident prevention is not possible. The thesis analyzes four in-flight anomalies to identify the underlying environmental factors that contributed to the technical failures. The major themes found from the in-flight anomalies include the importance of a system perspective throughout the life of the project, the criticality of maintaining excellence during routine tasks, and the experimental nature of the projects. Although nothing can guarantee a project success, research indicated the absence of key elements can set a project up for failure. These key elements include environmental awareness, proficient system engineering, engineering curiosity, engineering humility, and hands-on experience. Additionally, a cursory look at human and system behaviors that lead to resistance to change is provided. / (cont.) Best practices and lessons learned from past incidents are provided and recommendations for future projects are suggested. A few of the recommendations are to establish a strong system engineering discipline, to provide hands-on training opportunities, and to improve current risk management practices to include system factors. / by Rita M. Dal Santo. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2008. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-39). / This paper analyzes data from a study which focused on understanding the informal scientific communication network among Biotechnology firms in the Boston-Cambridge Biotech area. A previous study (Allen, et. al., 2009) provided an overview of the network, how the firms were connected to one another and the frequency of the communications. The analysis for this study focuses on the firms and their communication patterns to the universities - to better understand the potentially continuing role of the universities. The goal of the study is to analyze the factors that influenced communication patterns. The following factors were studied: size, age, type of firm and degrees of centrality. In conclusion, the study finds the universities are tightly integrated into the biotech network. Some firms chose to communicate only with the universities. In addition, we find size and age to have the greatest influence on this. Finally, degrees of centrality also play a significant role in the tendency of research scientists within firms to communicate with universities. / by Nada Hashmi. / S.M.in Engineering and Management

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, February 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-138). / by Michael H. Ambrose. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, June 2004. / "May 2004." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 89). / The automatic transmission is a very complex system in a modern automobile with several hundred components performing mechanical, hydraulic and electronic functions. System integration and attribute management are key challenges in the design and development of an automatic transmission. The system and sub system team structure can play a key part in the success of this development. A properly structured team can enhance the communication between the engineers designing the individual components, ensure that all interfaces between the components are properly managed and appropriate design actions are in place for best in class attributes. This thesis analyzes the current team structure and composition that is in place in the Automatic Transmission Division at Ford Motor Company and offers recommendations to improve the composition to better align the sub system teams with the actual workings of the transmission. The main tool that is used to enable this work is the Design Structure Matrix (DSM). Communication between individual team members is compared to components that physically touch or exchange energy through hydraulic means, or exchange electrical signals and preferred team compositions for effectively engineering these sub systems are proposed. The efficacy of these teams to manage attributes like noise and shift quality is also discussed. / by Ram Krishnaswami. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references. / It is broadly recognized in the automotive industry, as well as many others, that those organizations that can deliver timely new products or existing product upgrades at desired cost and quality targets will produce higher levels of customer satisfaction, higher profits and a significant competitive advantage. In an attempt to improve the product development process and the quality of engineering, many automotive firms have implemented, and continue to implement, numerous initiatives designed to increase the discipline within the engineering process with the expectation of meeting cost, timing, and customer satisfaction/quality targets. Improved product development systems, 6-sigma, reliability methods, and 8-D's, are some of the initiatives that have been utilized in attempts to improve the quality operating systems of the organization and tie engineering improvements to customer needs. While these initiatives have been successful within certain areas, there continues to be a shortfall between required performance and actual quality levels in some large, mature firms. While there has been substantial quality and cost improvement in the past few years, increasing competition continues to demand higher and higher value for the customer. Satisfying market requirements and permanently improving the quality of vehicles developed requires a complete understanding of the demands on the engineering system, including the enablers and roadblocks to the full utilization of robust engineering practices. This research examines one automotive company's product development process to determine how and why short cuts in the product development process are typically made. / (cont.) Through studying the progression of cultural change in the organization as related to the utilization of robust engineering tools, the roadblocks and the causal factors for lack of internalization and application of robust practices are identified. Finally, based on the study's analysis and results, effective corrective actions are identified and recommendations for their incorporation are made. / by John W. Fallu. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-79). / by J.C. Duh. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-82). / This thesis proposes a model for cost-benefit analysis for physical form selection of a decision support tool, primarily to support system acquisition decisions that need to be made early in the system life cycle. By bringing objective and subjective costs and benefits into the same model and prescribing a unique approach to determining system utility, this thesis demonstrates how the proposed model can be applied for objective evaluation of display interfaces for a decision support system. The proposed model, which is applied to a proposed decision support system for submarine commanders managing multiple unmanned underwater vehicles, follows an integrated systems engineering approach by first determining function followed by form. A hybrid cognitive task analysis is used to determine function, and cost-benefit analysis is used to determine form. The hybrid cognitive task analysis is a method for determining functions of a futuristic system, and the proposed cost benefit model fills the gap for objective evaluation of form. The cost-benefit analysis was not straightforward, as determining objective usability of the physical display interfaces is difficult since it is not feasible to design fully functional interfaces and accompanying software in the conceptual design phase of the systems engineering process. Thus, one of the novel contributions of this cost-benefit model is the ability to objectively compare user performance across displays using a representative functional task in a relatively simple experimental setting.While the application of the proposed cost-benefit model is shown only for application to the submarine commander decision support interface, it can be easily adopted for other human-systems integration efforts where system acquisition decisions are involved. This would benefit decision makers and system integrators in effective resource allocation and useful system implementation in the conceptual design phase. / by Dhiman Bhattacharjee. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-64). / Concurrent engineering initiatives and the closely related principle of front-loading development processes - identifying and solving problems early rather than waiting for traditional development and test processes to uncover them - have been shown to be highly effective in improving product development performance. This often means shifting to new experimentation technologies that can be used much earlier in the development process than traditional technologies, delivering performance assessments much faster. Thus problems within new design ideas are exposed much sooner, allowing for cost-effective problem solving techniques without having to rewind significant parts of the development process. Front-loading accelerates innovation by permitting new ideas to be tested and refined faster than traditional techniques, allowing them to be incorporated into products without the risks often associated with the use of unproven ideas. Traditional methods might still be needed for fine-tuning a design, but new rapid-feedback technologies have demonstrated their value when used within their limitations. Front-loading has gained acceptance in many vehicle product development organizations, but one field in which it has not yet been introduced for early-stage design assessments and problem solving is air flow analysis. The earliest stages of design for a new vehicle focus largely on the shape and character of the vehicle's surfaces, which in turn have a significant influence on many aspects of the vehicle's performance. / (cont.) Thus the introduction of new experimentation technologies like Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) requires a great deal more consideration due to their impact on these critical early stages of product development, but the value of these methods and changes can be demonstrated. The resulting changes required in the development organization to support these methods - including preservation of important creative processes and a pragmatic view of the complexities of process change - are found to be complex but approachable given suitable motivation, realistic mindset and a holistic view. / by Charles Alexander. / S.M.