Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 76-78). / Thesis statement: The purpose of this thesis is to provide a roadmap for how a component-focused engineering company can effectively introduce system integrators in their organization. To this end, the question of how to analytically identify the necessary skills and characteristics of an ideal system integrator will be addressed. In this thesis, it is assumed that a company is currently component-focused and trying to migrate towards system-focused product development, or that previous efforts to transition to systems thinking have not yet been effective. It is also assumed that there are system-level issues that have emerged in current or past products, such that a need for System Integrators (SIs) is recognized. This thesis will not address the issue of how a company determines whether or not SIs are required for their organization, but will help companies effectively identify, develop, and deploy SIs given that they are needed. In other words, a framework that outlines the necessary elements for successful introduction and sustainment of SIs will be developed. These key elements contain both technical and organizational/cultural aspects, providing a holistic approach to the institutionalization of SIs. / by Michelle P. Stevens. / 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. 97-99). / During any time of reorganization, it is important to look to processes and practices that have been used and proven effective by other organizations whether those organizations are similar in structure or similar in the transitory environment in which they are operating. For this reason, applying Lean Enterprise principles and practices that have been proven in both industry and governmental organizations can be of great benefit to the Acquisition Directorate of the United States Coast Guard as it reorganizes to improve mission execution. Notwithstanding that when most people hear the words "Lean Enterprise" they immediately think of enterprises involved in manufacturing or supply chain effectiveness, the principles of Lean Enterprise thinking can also be applied in the service and support environments. Therefore, the Coast Guard Acquisition Directorate, a service enterprise, can apply these same principles and practices in an effort to transform the directorate into a Lean Enterprise. In this thesis, the Coast Guard's Rescue 21 project was used as an example for the entire Coast Guard Acquisition Directorate. The Rescue 21 project consists of the acquisition of a new advanced command, control and communications system to replace the antiquated National Distress and Response System (NDRS). From the application of Lean Enterprise evaluation approaches to the Rescue 21 project, it was evident that: / (cont.) * The Rescue 21 project provides low value to its various stakeholders; * This low value is a direct result of cost overruns and schedule delays; * Misalignment exists among Strategic Objectives, Stakeholder Values, Key Processes and Metrics; * The Rescue 21 enterprise architecture has a solid foundation to improve value delivery; * The Rescue 21 project leadership desires to improve in the area of value delivery to stakeholders. / by Andrew J. Tiongson. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-83). / Introducing change in any company, organization or institution has never been an easy task to accomplish. There is always a resistance to change, as change creates confusion in the minds of people, makes them uncomfortable and requires compromises and adjustments in the way people are used to functioning. However, for the advancement of technology, organizations, society and life change is inevitable and will take place sooner or later. This thesis focuses on one such change - change in operational behavior in addressing a new market entry (IC programming socket market) by the semiconductor bum-in socket business unit of ACME Inc. The new market entry is done such that the solutions currently provided in the bum-in market are made to operate in a larger solution space with minimal changes to the product/solution to help maximize profitability of the same. This thesis discusses the differences between the two semiconductor test markets and the similarities between the solutions offered. Further, applying Paul Carlile's approach of using the Three Lenses approach in analyzing an organization - Strategic, Cultural and Political, the thesis brings out the salient issues in employing the new market entry strategy through an organizational perspective. / (cont.) In addition, the thesis discusses some fundamental inventory management techniques and application of the same to the development of an inventory management program. The deployment of 'all customers are not equal, all products are not equal and all service levels are customer-product level dependant' strategy helps in addressing the issues identified by the Three Lenses. Besides the identification of the strategy, the thesis also shows the importance of the implementation phase to the success of the program. Sharing the inventory analysis with the implementation team; identifying the market opportunity and sharing its effect on the top and bottom line with the management team; political influences required to get the team (direct and indirect) on board are the steps that were taken, without which implementation of the new market entry strategy would have seen a different end. On brining the two overarching business principles of organizational behavior and supply chain management together, ACME Inc. now enjoys the benefits of entering a new market with minimal engineering resources. It provides the organization an increase in profitability through product reuse, avoiding high volume manufacturing disruptions, avoiding not on time delivery excursions and a successful entry into a new market. / by Santosh Shanbhag. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 93). / Thesis Outline and Flow: Chapter 1. We begin by first reviewing the predominant industry and company dynamics driving the automotive industry today. We establish the need for shorter product development cycles as well as the need to create products to specifications. A review of relevant prior work is also presented to show where others have worked in this space. The problem statement and motivation for this work evolves subsequently. Chapter 2. We discuss product development activities as they relate to automotive development. We present automotive product development in the context of the system's engineering system-V. We also review the significant role of the virtual development process that is key to modern product development and why we must consider more than just geometric compatibility when evaluating designs for completeness. Chapter 3. Introduces the reader to automotive closures, specifically to side doors. A broad review is completed to facilitate the reader's understanding of subsequent chapters. Also, a view of how requirements are created and a description of the predominant requirements in automotive closures is included. Chapter 4. We get to the more technical and analytical section of this thesis. We begin with an overview of the design structure matrix and then explain the process used to create the case study DSM. We also discuss the art of architecting a DSM so it may be used as a very effective corporate knowledge base. Chapter 5. Represents the closures created DSM and the real world application of the requirements integrated design process. We present the DSM created for this thesis and discuss the nature of its content and then its structure. Chapter 6. Runs a Monte Carlo simulation on the As-Is DSM to create a benchmark. The average process completion time and standard deviation resulting from this simulation are used to measure the effectiveness of process improvement proposals. We discuss a number of the process improvements suggested by Auto OEM's subject matter experts (SMEs). These improvements are then incorporated into the simulation. Conclusions from our research are summarized. Chapter 7. Reflecting on this work completed in this research, chapter 7 shares practical insights gained during this research. Chapter 7 ends with suggestions on what future work may completed.7102 System Design and Management Program. / by Robert J. Corby. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. / In my thesis I explore the problem of optimizing trading strategies for complex portfolio transitions. Institutional investors run into this issue during periodic portfolio rebalancing or transition between asset managers. The costs of rebalancing can be broadly broken into trading costs (both the transaction cost and the market impact) and the opportunity costs of delaying the execution and bearing the risk of current-to-target portfolio divergence. This thesis proposes a methodology for measuring the opportunity cost as well as a strategy that minimizes the proposed measure through optimal portfolio transition execution. The benefits from the proposed trading strategy are benchmarked against the industry standard portfolio trading practices. / by Alexander Fadeev. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-82). / Globalization has led to the development of emerging markets and economies. With economic expansion around the globe, there is a greater energy demand to sustain this growth. Increasing energy demand has resulted in increase in energy prices and increase in emission levels. While conventional energy technologies have advantage in terms of established infrastructure and lower cost, they are inefficient and rely heavily on fossil fuels. Conventional energy technologies alone cannot sustain and cater to the evolving energy market's needs of higher efficiency, lower emissions and resources conservation. Renewable energy solutions and alternative energy technologies like distributed generation need to be developed to meet this energy demand, conserve the definite resources and reduce emissions. But at the moment, alternative energy technologies due to lack of infrastructure, development cost and regulations are limited in their applications. Therefore in the near term, we recommend that they strategically position themselves in the market with niche and right fit opportunities. We also recommend that they need to utilize the development dollars effectively in integrating technology development with their product development activities and develop durable cost effective products. They also need to develop key partnerships and integrate value across their development and fulfillment chains. Strategic positioning, value chain integration and key execution in development with mature processes will aid alternative energy technologies to overcome the existing market barriers and move towards rapid commercialization. / by Sundar Jayaraman. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 166-168). / The thesis examines the evolution of mobile transceiver architecture using the management framework pioneered by Carliss Baldwin and Kim Clark. The thesis begins with an introduction and an overview of the wireless communication value network. The author subsequently distills the salient aspects of the Baldwin and Clark management framework predicated on bottleneck analysis, modularity, and return on invested capital. The prominence of bottleneck analysis motivates a technical chapter that summarizes the bottlenecks relevant to all wireless communication systems, namely data rate, error rate, and battery life. A brief chapter discussing the dominant wireless communication network architecture, TDMA and CDMA, corroborates the bottleneck analysis and effectively assigns the error rate and battery life bottlenecks to the handset ODM and supplier layers of the value network. With a clear vision of the competitive bottlenecks, the evolution of transceiver architecture is presented in the context of the aforementioned management framework. Through this analysis, design power is shown to have passed from handset ODMs to integrated circuit suppliers. A noteworthy byproduct of the analysis is the genesis of the bottleneck tree whereby new layers of bottlenecks are emergent upon a firm's selection of a particular design architecture that targets the strategic bottleneck layer. Finally, the thesis is concluded with a summary of the ground covered and the author's opinions of how the architecture may yet evolve and the future nature of the competitive landscape. / by Christopher A. Aden. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-102). / Organizations strive continuously to become efficient. Over the years many of them have tried to attain this through streamlining or reengineering their product development practices. 'While some of them succeed others are less successful. Product development organizations within automotive enterprises are not different in this regard. Most reengineering efforts seem to concentrate on tasks and schedule. Detailed schedules are cascaded while the identification of enablers on delivering to the new schedule is left to individual teams in the organization. At the working level, the reengineering process is misunderstood as abandonment of things gone right from past practices. This sometimes results in teams reinventing solutions to similar problems from the past. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that a key enabler for success in any reengineering effort is to understand existing knowledge management practices and reuse them in the context of proposed changes. To do so, existing practices would have to be captured in usable formats. Proposed changes to existing product development process within an automotive product development organization are studied. / (cont.) Comparisons are made between existing and proposed product development process. To focus this comparison and understand the changes better, the development tasks undertaken by a safety attribute team within the product development group is studied in detail. An analysis of the development process undertaken by the safety team to existing schedule is performed through case studies. Based on this analysis scenarios are developed for the proposed changes. From the case studies it is apparent that formalized knowledge management practices in formats usable by development teams will help in reducing iteration time through cascade of robust targets. Recommendations are made to build upon and sustain recently implemented knowledge management practices within the safety attribute team. An implementation roadmap for the new knowledge management frame work is provided. / Ram N. Krishnaswami. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, February 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-144). / by Mitzi Ann M. Mori [and] Jacqueline Y. Tyson. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006. / "June 2006." / Includes bibliographical references. / Over the last decade technological innovation in computers and communications industries has resulted in higher penetration of technology intensive products in businesses and homes. In communications industry, the true value of converged networks will be exploited only if the products and services provided end-to-end quality, reliability and consistency of features and functionalities that are offered. However, for this to happen, the products, systems and networks need to be interoperable. Interoperability can be accomplished most effectively and efficiently by use of common standards; but at the same time use of common standards potentially and arguably leads to commoditization of products, and constrains ability of product differentiation. Processes for setting standards, are not only messy but are prolonged, and quite often lead to battles for platform leadership. As incumbent telecommunications service providers transition from the public switched telephone networks to the IP-based data networks, customer expectations are high, challenges are many and failures are costly. / (cont.) Verizon Interoperability Forum has taken on this challenge by attempting to develop standards for interfaces for network elements that are used on Verizon's own network. It is proposed that network interfaces' standards exhibit characteristics of network effects and possess a great potential for becoming a de facto standard. / by Uday Hardikar. / S.M.