Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Pages 198 and 199 are blank. Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-194). / It is possible to categorize four contemporary challenges as the greatest threats to global well-being and the persistence of humankind. These challenges are global climate and ecological change, poor human health management, violence (or the absence of peace), and poverty and hunger. If our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are to survive in a peaceful world where fruitful progress can occur, these contemporary global challenges must be addressed thoughtfully and collectively as a human species. It is the contention of this paper that there exists an optimal and necessary set of requirements and conditions (at a global and organizational level) that give us the greatest probability of success in tackling these most urgent human challenges. The goal of this thesis is to prove this hypothesis and that these conditions can be explained by causal models as well as empirically tested through historical application and validation and direct application on a real world situation. A simple model for assessment of potential success for addressing the most challenging human endeavors is delivered. Sub-goals include presenting an analysis of the current global approaches to solving the major human challenges and how they can be improved. / by Anando A. Chowdhury. / S.M.in Engineering and Management

Thesis (M. Eng. in Logistics)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-103). / This paper looks at some of these travails as well as the common tools used to approach a volatile priced commodity, diesel fuel. It focuses on the impacts of hedging for companies that are directly impacted through the consumption of diesel fuel in addition to companies that are indirectly impacted because they outsource their transportation. It examines the impact of a fuel surcharge and how it distributes risk throughout the supply chain. To complement the research, analysis was conducted in the form of a survey to benchmark the industry with respect to current practices of hedging and fuel surcharges, a sensitivity test of a fuel surcharge matrix to find its appropriate usage, and a simulation to provide guidance as to the appropriate strategy for hedging. Lessons learned from the survey flowed into the sensitivity testing and simulation. These three segments of analysis highlighted the problem of volatility, increasing cost, and inability to pass on the cost, proving the true pain of fuel in the market. Ultimately, the paper answers: How to utilize hedging and a fuel surcharge program to stabilize the cost of fuel? The survey showed the wide adoption of fuel surcharges, confirming the academic research. The sensitivity test proved the need to keep the escalator variable in line with a carrier's actual fuel efficiency and standardize for all carriers. The simulation recommended longer term derivatives. Putting this together, the fuel surcharge establishes stability for the carrier, at the risk of the shipper. The shipper must maintain that stability through its maintenance of the escalator in the fuel surcharge matrix. Additionally, the shipper should hedge fuel via long term derivatives to establish personal fuel cost stability, creating a competitive advantage and enabling the shipper to compete more effectively. / by Charles A. Shehadi, III and Michael R. Witalec. / M.Eng.in Logistics

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2012. / "September 2012." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-167). / The Compatibility Assessment Method (CAM), a new structured process for assessing compatibility between parent systems and child subsystems is proposed and applied to several cases where subsystems are being replaced in legacy systems. CAM is a screening process intended to be used by project managers who need to replace components of complex systems. The functional model-based process uses an extension of the Integrated Definition Modeling Language of IDEFO. The IDEFO method is used for defining compatibility measures based on each of the four constituent arrows that show inputs, controls, outputs, and mechanisms (ICOM). In this extension, the control constituents are replaced with constraints. Each of the ICOM constituents is expanded with parameters which include metrics and values. The ICOMs with their parameters and metrics are then used to characterize two or more subsystems in a matrix format. The differences between these matrices are entered into the sparse "Delta Matrix" which shows analysts the differences between the systems. These differences can be assigned to the appropriate levels of technical expertise to be analyzed and to determine feasibility of the child subsystem in the parent system. The process is compared to current practices in government unmanned aircraft system program offices to determine the usefulness of adopting this compatibility assessment process. This dissertation outlines the need for and development of the method for application by practitioners responsible for replacing subsystems on legacy systems. The development includes evaluations of the method and an experiment with cohorts of student system engineers to compare the output of the Compatibility Assessment Method to less-structured methods. This research contributes additional insight into system architecting theory and proposes a structured method for practitioners to use to improve the processes to perform part replacement in legacy systems. While others have offered methods to measure aspects of system architecture, this proposed method moves beyond the extant literature with tools for practitioners. / by David Scott Andrew Long. / Ph.D.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-152). / The current trend of globalization as well as the growing complexity of multilateral systems engineering endeavors will contribute to the increasingly cross-cultural nature of systems engineering programs and teams in the future. It is thus vital to investigate if cultural differences have an influence on systems engineering endeavors in order to better understand culture's potential contribution, or impediment, to critical systems engineering outcomes. This thesis proposes a definition of culture that will be meaningful to such an investigation, selects Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory as a tool to apply this definition of culture, and analyzes the manned spaceflight programs of the US and China as a case study to determine if culture does indeed have an influence on systems engineering. The results of this analysis reveal that cultural differences do impact systems engineering endeavors from strategic to operational levels. Important differences in the US and China manned spaceflight programs primarily stemming from differences in the cultural norms of the US and China were found in three main areas of analysis. Firstly, in terms of the purpose of the programs, cultural differences led to differences in the kind of motivations each country had for achieving manned spaceflight, the organizations set up to achieve this goal, and the way leadership approval for the programs was attained. Secondly, in terms of the programs themselves, differences in cultural attitudes towards risk and launch failure led to differences in program schedule, program scope, the nature of the flighttesting schedule, and the extent of quality control measures. Thirdly, in terms of the people involved in the programs, differences in cultural norms led to differences in decision-making styles, use of authority, motivations and earnings of the engineers and astronauts, extent of astronaut involvement in the programs, the extent of manual control built into manned spaceflight launches, the degree of formality of the launches, and media coverage of the launches. Furthermore, these two very different programs were eventually judged to be a success in each nation precisely because of these cultural differences, even though each country's program would have been considered a pyrrhic victory in the other. The conclusions of this thesis propose how this demonstrated influence of culture on systems engineering should be used to inform systems engineering endeavors in the future. / by Yeong Li Qian. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-168). / If we are willing to pay a premium, we may be able to mitigate some of the long-lasting impacts of nuclear waste. Deciding how to navigate this tradeoff, between cost and waste, is a central challenge for stewards of nuclear power. It is made more difficult by uncertainties that characterize the global future of nuclear electricity generation. The recent increase in concern about climate change has prompted U.S. policymakers to back strategies favorable toward nuclear power, so much so that some experts see a "nuclear renaissance" on the horizon. Whether such a renaissance will come to pass, involving the construction of a vast new fleet of nuclear plants, is unclear - especially in light of the March 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan. Even more unclear is what should be done with the commercial U.S. nuclear waste, given an array of technical options and a large amount of uncertainty about how much waste will ultimately need to be managed. This study introduces a framework for analysis of strategies to evolve the nuclear fuel cycle which may be helpful in analyzing decision problems for similarly complex, long-lived technical infrastructure systems. The framework consists of a system dynamics simulation coupled with a decision analysis model. The system dynamics code is developed specifically for this study to be simple, fast-running, and also to echo the results of many previous nuclear fuel cycle simulations in demonstrating how various technical options impact important parameters (like uranium consumed, waste generated, etc.). Code results are benchmarked to more complex fuel cycle simulations for the parameters relevant to the decision space. The decision analysis model takes information from the simulation and makes it useful to policymakers, by allowing the explicit analysis of desirable decision pathways under uncertainty, and also considering tradeoffs among system goals. The framework is applied to three nuclear systems, the light-water reactor (LWR) once through fuel cycle, which represents the status quo, an advanced, traditional, plutonium-fed self sustaining fast reactor fuel cycle, and a fast reactor fuel cycle for which initial fast reactor cores are composed of enriched uranium rather than recycled LWR fuel. Fast reactors are highly likely to cost more than LWRs, but they can produce electricity from some of the elements that most plague the long-term management of a nuclear waste repository. A value function compares how these options fare under different scenarios, incorporating system-wide costs and the system waste burden as the two attributes in the function. The primary result is that the best strategy, under a strong preference for eliminating LWR spent nuclear fuel waste, consists of building a few traditional fast reactors now, and then building a full fleet more rapidly later in the century. This allows both for a significant amount of waste mitigation compared to an all-LWR fuel cycle, and for the costs associated with the more expensive fast reactor technology to be incurred primarily later in the century. On the other hand, if cost is the main consideration, the framework advises moving forward with the once-through LWR fuel cycle and avoiding fast reactors altogether, or at least until later in the century. These results are examined from a traditional decision analysis perspective, and then from one that departs somewhat from the assumption of a fully powerful decision maker. In reality, a government decision maker can only offer incentives to industry in order to induce a strategy change. Changing the decision model to reflect this reality causes the framework to more strongly advise moving forward with traditional fast reactors. This occurs because any single attempt at offering incentives to industry might be unsuccessful, and thus prevent a waste concerned government from achieving any significant mitigation. The most important contribution of the methodology is its ability to illuminate which parameters represent strong drivers of system decisions. Preferences across competing attributes are always important: in general, if decision maker preferences for reducing cost vs. waste were to shift significantly, the framework would show a change in the desirable decision strategy. Decision results are not very sensitive, on the other hand, to the rate of nuclear power growth or to the cost of fast reactor technology. A second contribution comes from the initial foray into studying a more complex decision maker perspective, and shows how a different view can complement results using the traditional decision analysis assumption of an "ideal" decision maker. Ultimately, the system dynamics/decision analysis framework presented here helps identify desirable pathways for complex system evolution, identifies factors that bear strongly on decisions and which are deserving of more study, and begins to show how strategy implementation can be considered within the framework in order to further improve decision-making. / by Lara Marie Pierpoint. / Ph.D.

Thesis: M. Eng. in Logistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "June 2014." / Includes bibliographical references (pages 64-65). / Given the importance of operational inefficiencies and their negative impact on the bottom line in today's competitive economy, CVS/pharmacy is very interested in implementing operational improvement initiatives across its inbound supply chain to minimize the number of non-value-added activities. Undertaking such efforts requires collaboration amongst all trade partners and a systematic approach in measuring the important performance metrics. Currently there is not a single procedure that defines the necessary metrics and the analytical tools necessary for identifying improvement opportunities. Leveraging research from the manufacturing industry, specifically supplier certification and statistical process control, this thesis aims to develop a comprehensive methodology for analyzing, monitoring and improving the operational performance of the retail industry supply chain. In this thesis, through an innovative approach to perfect order performance measurement combined with the practical application of statistical analysis methods, a complete supplier evaluation process is established. Further, by utilizing statistical sampling and based on the evaluation results, an inspection plan is provided that allows for accurate monitoring of ongoing processes with a reduction in inspection efforts. Finally through introduction of statistical process control models and root cause analysis, a complete procedure is developed for continuous evaluation and improvement, leading to efficiency gains and cost savings across the entire inbound supply chain. / by Tyler Haley and Hossein Nasseri. / M. Eng. in Logistics

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. / The impact of intellectual property rights on the production, diffusion and accumulation of scientific knowledge has been a central concern of public policymakers and economists in both public and private institutions, and scholars in management economics and sociology. In this dissertation, I examine the central patenting debates over the role of patenting the life sciences and address a set of interrelated questions: (1) the impact of strategic intellectual property policies of institutions on their cumulative knowledge dissemination, utilization and commercialization; (2) the unique attributes of life science innovations captured by patents generated under different institutional settings; and (3) the degree to which patenting activities impact the rate and trajectories of scientific knowledge accumulation under varying intellectual property conditions. I take as my research setting, the Human Genome Project (HGP) and our mapping of the entire human genome that emerged from the project (as defined in both scientific publications and patents). The HGP was a 13-year, $3.8 billion research effort funded and coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institute of Health, and one of the most significant life science research projects ever undertaken. / (cont.) To address the first question, I study the seven key genome centers in the HGP, which produced almost all the genome sequence output and provide an unusually matched and well-controlled natural experiment to examine the impact of different knowledge institutions on the subsequent diffusion of scientific knowledge. To explore the second question, I build on the data set of the population of 4270 gene patents to systematically quantify and analyze the important attributes of these gene-based innovations. Through the construction of a set of validated measures, I specifically characterize the variation in these innovations when made under public versus private institutional settings and compare them to the innovations across broad technology fields from previous studies. To answer the third question, I identify and construct a large-scale, novel data set of 1279 unique patent-paper pairs from the gene patents and apply econometric models to shed light on the degree to which patent grant in the life sciences impacts the rate of follow-on scientific research. I find that publications with matched patent pairs are associated with higher citations on the average. Since only an institutional policy allowing patents results in patents, such policy does not stifle cumulative knowledge dissemination and use. In addition, patents contribute to technological innovation, commercialization and start-up. / (cont.) Furthermore, I identified a growing convergence of public/academic and industry innovations in the life sciences especially in terms of their "basicness" and appropriability as characterized by the Pasteur's quadrant, and that variation in institutional setting is associated with differential innovation characteristics. I also find evidence of "technological trajectories", coherence and persistence across various attributes of life science innovations. However, I determine that gene patenting impedes temporal knowledge diffusion and use and decreases citations of paired publications once they are granted and become "visible" to the public, as predicted by the anti-commons effect. I also ascertain that patenting hinders knowledge diffusion and use to a greater degree on private sector authored publications than public ones and for U.S. authored than non-U.S. authored ones, and that corporate patenting has a more adverse impact than public institution patenting. As the first study of its kind to directly test the "patent thicket" conceptualization, I find direct statistical evidence of the adverse effect of "patent thickets" and that the patenting of disease and cancer genes negatively impacts knowledge dissemination and use by follow-on scientists and researchers. / by Kenneth Guang-Lih Huang. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, System Design and Management Program, February 2011. / "November 2010." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-58). / This thesis focuses on the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the time of the 2009 HINI pandemic and its possible relation to RO and R(t). RO is defined as the mean number of people that a newly infected person will subsequently infect in a completely susceptible population whereas R(t) is the average number of new infections by an infectious individual at time t. RO is important for understanding the severity of an influenza outbreak while R(t) is a necessary tool to measure the progression of infection rate over time. A high RO value (more than 2) generally corresponds to a more serious outbreak. This thesis discusses a town in Mexico named La Gloria, which is thought to be the place where the HINI pandemic started, and the subsequent implementation of NPIs in Mexico City as the virus spread and people became aware of its novelty. An evaluation of Mexico's response to HlNl suggests that the emphasis on the use of NPIs may have related to a decreasing RO value. Further investigation of this relationship using news articles and Google Insights also shows interesting potential correlations. In short my thesis focuses on the possible relationship between ROs and NPIs in a pandemic setting. / by Sahar Hashmi. / S.M.in Engineering and Management

Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / Boston, specifically Kendall Square, has a high concentration of technology startups. This concentration provides the opportunity to study the connection between the founding conditions and the outcome of the entrepreneurial effort in a relatively controlled environment. Through case studies including deep research and founder interviews we explore the role of people and places in the founding of four Cambridge technology start-ups. The findings indicate maturity of ideation, team size, experience - in startups in general and in the specific sector, understanding of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, passion for the mission and ability to communicate are key factors in the success of a startup. Connectors - people and places - are best engaged to assist in completing a founding team who have a defined focus and to provide investor leads to a founding team post-ideation, but founders with the ability to make first-degree connections may be more successful than those who use connectors. / by Carrie L. Stalder. / S.M.in Engineering and Management

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 44-45). / The research presented in this thesis examines the technical benefits to using a collaborative network of Autonomous Undersea Vehicles (AUVs) in place of individual vehicles. Benefits could be achieved in the areas of reduced power consumption, improved positional information and improved acoustic communication bandwidth. However, current culture of AUV development may impede this approach. The thesis uses the Object Process Methodology (OPM) and principles of System Architecture to trace the value of an AUV system from the scientist who benefits from the data to the vehicle itself. Sections 3 and 4 outline the needs for an AUV system as they currently exist and describe the key physics-based limitations of operations. Section 5 takes a broader look at the system goal as data delivery, not just the deployment of a vehicle, and introduces the concept of networked AUV. Section 6 describes a potential evolution of networked AUVs in increasing autonomy and collaboration. Finally, Section 7 examines AUV development cultures that could impede, or foster, networked vehicles. / by Patrick L. Wineman. / S.M.