MIT Reports to the President 1999–2000
MIT faculty and researchers at the Center for Technology, Policy, and Industrial Development (CTPID) work collaboratively with over 65 sponsoring corporations and government agencies to develop new knowledge and technological strategies that support global economic growth and advance policies that preserve the environment and benefit society at large.
CTPID's ten interdisciplinary research programs focus on contemporary industrial problems–such as how to build safe, affordable, and environmentally friendly automobiles–that span social, natural, and technological interests. Established in 1985, CTPID's programs, which generated nearly $8 million in research funding in FY2000, address industrial issues in the aerospace, automotive, business and environment, materials systems, mobility, telecommunications, and technology and law sectors.
Over 50 faculty and researchers at MIT’s schools of engineering, management, humanities, and social sciences are affiliated with the center and a hundred more scholars at MIT and other prestigious universities participate in research projects. Faculty and CTPID researchers lead these programs: the Cooperative Mobility Program (CMP); Ford/MIT Collaboration (administered by CTPID); International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP); Labor Aerospace Research Agenda (LARA); Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI); Lean Sustainment Initiative (LSI); Materials Systems Laboratory (MSL); Research Program on Communications Policy (RPCP); Technology, Business, and Environment Program (TBE); and Technology and Law Program (T&L).
Two major initiatives launched in 1999–2000 focused CTPID researchers on strategic opportunities related to the Internet and communicated the center's accomplishments to broader audiences both within MIT and outside.
Planning began this year for the conference entitled "The Third Wave: Industry Opportunities for the Internet-Enabled Future," A Multidisciplinary and Cross-Industry Exploration of How Information Technologies and the Internet Are Challenging–And Changing–the Aerospace, Transportation, Communications, and Resources Industries. The conference was spurred, in part, by the intention to introduce sponsors and prospective sponsors to the full scope of CTPID research opportunities and, in part, by program innovations such as the International Motor Vehicle Program’s new Global eAutomotive Program. Scheduled for Nov. 8—9, 2000, the conference will present keynotes on the impact of the Internet on the automotive industry and on the future of the Internet, and each program will describe recent research and how information technologies are changing their research sectors. The conference is co-sponsored with MIT's Office of Corporate Relations.
A major communications initiative began this year to more effectively convey the scope of CTPID research both within the center, within MIT, and to the public. The center established an Office of Communications that accomplished these goals:
CTPID plays a key part in the Engineering Systems Division's mission and mandate by helping to define ESD's research agenda and contributing to its development. Both CTPID's research programs and 25-year-old graduate program are now part of ESD. The master’s Technology and Policy Program and the doctoral Technology, Management, and Policy Program enrolled 141 students in 1999—2000; 39 students earned SM degrees and four earned PhDs.
The Labor Aerospace Research Agenda completed its first year, co-directed by Thomas Kochan, George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management, and Senior Research Scientist Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld.
Debbie Nightingale, Professor of the Practice of Aerospace Engineering, initiated a new program to develop the LAI Lean Enterprise Self Assessment Tool (LESAT).) The prototype Enterprise Level module is designed to facilitate multiple business and government processes ranging from financial analysis control to managing technology innovation.
Motorola, Inc. became the 10th member company supporting the work of RPCP’s Internet and Telecoms Convergence. Cisco Systems is a new sponsor of the Materials Systems Lab.
Car Launch: The Human Side of Managing Change, by Ford-MIT Collaboration Executive Director George Roth et al. Oxford University Press Learning History Library, 1999.
Product Design and Development, 2nd edition, by Steven D. Eppinger, Ford-MIT, et al, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2000.
Competition, Regulation, and Convergence: Current Trends in Telecommunications Policy Research, edited by Sharon Eisner Gillett, RPCP Executive Director, et al. Lawrence Erbaum Associates, 1999.
Oil Change: Perspectives on Corporate Transformation, by George Roth, Ford-MIT, et al. Oxford University Learning History Library, 1999.
Introduction to Transportation Systems, by Joseph Sussman, CMP,
Artech House Publishers, 2000.
Publication Award: Daniel Whitney and Krish Mantripragada, who earned a PhD in 1998 after working with Whitney on the Agile Manufacturing Project, won the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation Best Paper Award for 1999.
Christopher Boutleiller, professor of finance at Reims Management School, France, and Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, was a visiting scholarly studying intangible asset assessment in the services industry.
Ki-Chan Kim, director of the Institute of Industry Management and Associate Professor of Management at the Catholic University of Korea, joined IMVP to study aspects of automotive supply chains.
Fred Stahl, an aerospace executive and Air Force consultant, and Jeffrey Bentley, manager of business research at Textron Systems, Inc., were LAI visiting scholars.
Salvator Gerbino, an engineering professor at the University of Naples, and Stefan Bungert, a graduate student at the Technical University of Berlin, worked with Senior Research Scientist Daniel Whitney.
Lee McKnight, director of the Edward R. Murrow Center at Tufts University, and Hyun-Dae Cho, senior researcher at the Korean Institute of Science and Technology, held ongoing appointments with RPCP and TPP, respectively.
"The Third Wave: Industry Opportunities for the Internet-Enabled Future" conference, scheduled Nov. 8—9, 2000, and cosponsored by CTPID and the Office for Corporate Relations, is expected to draw 150–200 corporate and government sponsors and prospective sponsors.
Charley Fine will become director of the IMVP program July 1, 2000. He will co-chair IMVP's new Global eAutomotive Program with Professor John Paul MacDuffie of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Michael C. Ruettgers, CEO of EMC Corporation, is scheduled to speak October 11 in the jointly sponsored Leaders in Technology and Management Lecture series.
Ford executive Chris Magee, who holds a PhD and a MBA, came to MIT as executive director of the Ford/MIT Strategic Technical Partnership.
Jennifer Nash, Associate TBE Director since 1996, was appointed acting director.
William Lehr, who served as RPCP acting director August—March, was named associate director.
Fred Stahl, an aerospace executive, was appointed as LAI stakeholder co-director.
Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, LARA co-director, was named Senior Research Scientist.
Professor Richard de Neufville retired as chairman of the Technology and Policy master's program after 25 years. Aero/Astro Professor Dan Hastings was named TPP co-director.
Nancy DuVergne Smith, a communications and web consultant, was appointed communications director.
CTPID hosted a retirement dinner for John Ehrenfeld, who retired as Technology, Business, and Environment Program director in April. He will spend next year teaching at the Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands. Ehrenfeld won the 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award give by World Resources Institute and the Initiative for Social Innovation through Business, a program of the Aspen Institute.
Fred Moavenzadeh, Professor of Engineering Systems and Civil and Environmental Engineering, is center director; Patricia Vargas is assistant director. CTPID’s 17-person faculty council, which provides intellectual oversight and liaison with academic units across MIT, includes leaders from the School of Engineering, the Sloan School of Management, Lincoln Laboratory, and MIT’s Office of Corporate Relations.
For more information, visit http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/www/.
The Cooperative Mobility Program (CMP) brings together transportation scholars from MIT and other universities with private sector specialists and corporate sponsors to explore current and future issues of worldwide mobility. CMP proposes a new vision: a sustainable multimodal transportation system that will provide the mobility necessary to foster global economic development compatible with social needs and environmental concerns.
CMP is grounded in empirical research on travel behavior, technological approaches, and public policies that affect mobility in both developed and developing countries. It compiles an annual Mobility Observatory that tracks innovative developments in transportation policy, management, and technology.
Among other research projects conducted in the past year, CMP researchers and graduate students studied the impacts of transportation on air pollution in Mexico City; worked on forecasts of worldwide demand for mobility; assessed the implications of transportation trends for controlling greenhouse gas emissions; and studied emerging mobility trends in China.
Current planning for the coming year focuses on preparing a volume of essays reporting the program’s academic research for a general audience and a possible major initiative on worldwide connections between mobility and environmental protection.
In an innovative program, the Ford Motor Company has engaged the Institute in addressing an array of 21st century challenges confronting the automotive manufacturer. The multimillion dollar collaboration, begun in 1997, focuses on three research areas: virtual engineering, virtual education, and the environment. Initial priorities include the study of engineering design and educational environments of the future as well as seed funding for a major MIT-directed consortium to address global environmental challenges. One goal of the collaboration is the development of mechanisms for effective, long-term industry/university partnerships.
CTPID administers the overall grant and is the home to several of the Ford/MIT Collaboration projects. As part of Ford's Virtual Engineering research, CTPID Senior Research Scientist Daniel Whitney is leading a project on Assembly Advisor, incorporating assembly information in computer-aided design systems. He is also involved, with Professor Steven Eppinger, in a project called Information-Based Product Development that explores appropriate information technology tools for synthesizing complex information in product development programs. Lotte Bailyn, the T Wilson (Class of 1953) professor of management, leads the Engineering Careers Project. Janice Klein, senior lecturer at the Sloan School of Management, heads research on Virtual Teams. George Roth, executive director of the program, also leads a research effort on the organizational changes implied by industry partnerships at MIT.
As a partner in this Institute-wide initiative, CTPID supports over a dozen projects and twenty researchers working on Ford-MIT projects. MIT faculty involved in the Ford/MIT Collaboration use conferences, videoconferences, web sites, and virtual forums to communicate the results of this work to both Ford and the public.
George Roth is the executive director. For more information, visit the Ford/MIT Collaboration web site http://ford-mit.mit.edu/.
IMVP, the largest international research group studying and reporting on the automobile industry and its global milieu, is launching a new Global eAutomotive Program directed at understanding the impact of information technologies on the auto industry.
Innovations in the Internet, electronic business practices, and consumer expectations are leading to a transformation that challenges every point of the value chain. And this new challenge puts consumer choice at the heart of each transaction. The Global eAutomotive Program focuses on how evolving engineering trends, business practices, and information technology will sustain and grow some companies while threatening to make others obsolete. eAutomotive’s new research projects are designed to encourage a new way to think about making things, through the neutral brokerage of independent thinking.
Since 1980, IMVP has provided an unbiased, detailed, and integrated view of the dynamics of the worldwide automotive industry and its important drivers. IMVP and its predecessor, the Future of the Automobile program, have received funding from the Sloan Foundation, automakers worldwide, and their suppliers since the late ‘80s.
IMVP's International Assembly Plant Study explores issues related to quality, productivity, flexibility, and lean production in automotive assembly. Round One, led by John Krafcik and John Paul MacDuffie at MIT, led to the international best-seller, The Machine that Changed the World (1989), a book that unveiled the lean production system perfected in Japan. Round Two, conducted by MacDuffie and Frits Pil, enlarged the sample and revealed a pronounced trend converging on best practice worldwide.
Technology supply chains address these issues:
The strengths of Lifecycle Analysis (LCA) as a strategic tool derive from roots in traditional process analysis and from the recognition that an action's effects include the entire range of consequences. IMVP has funded the development of a strategic lifecycle valuation methodology in conjunction with sponsors who are evaluating its use.
Professor Charles Fine is IMVP director. For more information, visit the IMVP website at http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/www/imvp/.
The Labor Aerospace Research Agenda (LARA) began in June 1998 with the belief that people are at the heart of new work systems–establishing stability and then driving continuous improvement. LARA was designed to further the understanding of this critical social dimension of what are termed lean principles in the aerospace industry. LARA operates under sponsorship and advisory input by the UAW and the IAM and it is affiliated with the Lean Aerospace Initiative. Funding is provided via the Manufacturing Technology initiative of the U.S. Air Force and other sources.
This year, the focus has been on the impact of instability on employment and new work practices in the aerospace industry. Specifically, we are examining three potential sources of instability–changes in technology, changes in markets, and changes in organizations. To better understand this issue, we have conducted five case studies in a mix of air frame, engine, and avionics facilities–spanning military and commercial sectors of the industry. LARA also completed a national random sample facility survey, with data collected from 196 separate aerospace facilities. Over 400 individual workers, engineers, and managers have also completed individual surveys on employment and instability issues.
The findings to date suggest that there are many innovative ways that individuals, facilities, and organizations attempt to mitigate the impact of instability. Still, the existing innovations are insufficient to effectively address the many sources of instability in this industry, which has direct measurable implications for individual employment and careers as well as for organizational performance. Based on these initial findings, LARA is continuing research on instability and broadening the focus in the coming year to explore industry-level institution building and issues centered on investment in intellectual capital.
A first step toward industry-level institution building occurred in January 2000, when leaders from labor, management, and government gathered in Washington to explore issues of high performance work systems, instability, and employment in the aerospace industry. The conference was co-sponsored by LARA and LAI. LARA also joins LAI in linking with related initiatives in England and Sweden, with an August 2000 calibration conference planned.
The project is led by co-principal investigators Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld and Thomas Kochan. Susan Cass has joined the project as Project Manager, replacing Art Wheaton who has joined the labor education faculty at Cornell University. Project researchers Betty Barrett, Takashi Inaba, and Mike Parker continue work on the case studies and other products that are emerging from the research.
LAI is a consortium-guided MIT research program managed under the auspices of the Center for Technology, Policy, and Industrial Development (CTPID) in collaboration with the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Research is conducted by over a dozen faculty members from the Schools of Engineering and Management, graduate students from several MIT courses and graduate programs, and staff members of CTPID. LAI is an active partnership among 21 aerospace companies, 13 U.S. government agencies, labor representatives, and MIT. It also collaborates internationally with LARP (Lean Aerospace Research Program) at Linköping University and the UK LAI.
The initiative was formally launched in 1993 out of practicality and necessity as declining defense procurement budgets collided with military industrial overcapacity prompting a demand for "cheaper, faster, and better" products using a philosophy called lean. Lean means adding value by eliminating waste, being responsive to change, focusing on quality, and enhancing the effectiveness of the workforce. It was documented in the U.S. by researchers from MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program and in the book The Machine That Changed The World.
Since "lean" is much broader than production, integrative research that addresses the various stages of aerospace systems–planning, contracting, development, production, and operating–drives LAI's success and helps move its members forward in their lean journeys. This research examines Manufacturing Systems; Supplier Networks; Product Development; Acquisition; Organizations and People; and Test and Space Operations.
Through active collaboration and this focused team research, LAI delivers an evolving and expanded knowledge base. It's one that addresses complex products with relatively low volume production, the entire enterprise including product development and support, and the extended enterprise level including the government customer. Research rich products such as the Lean Enterprise Model (LEM) result, creating a foundation of reference tools for common awareness, language, and understanding of lean principles.
Research progress and insights for the year include understanding production system design lessons from the automobile industry (Manufacturing Systems); modeling and analyzing cost, schedule, and performance in complex system product development (Product Development); building information systems to integrate the manufacturing supply chain (Supplier Networks); costs and cycle time implications of contractor and government policies during the development phase of major programs (Policy).
During the past year, LAI’s Knowledge Deployment and Lean Enterprise product teams as well as the research teams acted as a catalysts for discussion and helped to infuse new ideas into the industry through thematic and topical workshops and conferences
LAI delivered major policy recommendations to the Department of Defense this past year. Recommendations were based on research from the "Economic Incentives for Production."
Using "best life cycle value" as a beacon, LAI has identified five key themes for research in Phase III including: measuring value to the enterprise; time; organizations and people; knowledge and information infrastructure; and government as a lean customer and operator. LAI's plan is to address barriers to implementation in the transition to lean and to emphasize knowledge deployment.
Professor Earll Murman from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Professor Tom Allen from the Sloan School of Management are Co-Directors. Mr. Fred Stahl is the Stakeholder Co-Director for LAI.
More information on LAI can be found on the World Wide Web at http://web.mit.edu/lean/.
LSI’s mission is to enable fundamental transformation of the U.S. aerospace sustainment enterprise into a cost-effective, quality driven, timely, and responsive combat support system.
Highlights of the year are as follows:
Complete the development of the vehicle through which government and industry may support LSI research; and to expand the government stakeholder base to include the Navy, Army, and OSD.
LSI hired a new project coordinator, Tim Cathcart.
The Materials Systems Laboratory (MSL) is internationally recognized for its innovative work analyzing the competitive position of materials and the strategic implications of material choice. For nearly two decades, MSL has addressed the issues arising from materials choice in a range of applications, particularly those in the automotive, electronic, and aerospace industries, but with a recent emphasis on automotive applications. Currently, MSL is expanding its scope to once again address issues in electronic materials, with an initial focus on automotive electronics applications. This expansion will build upon MSL’s past experience in the area of electronic materials processing as well as its recent experience in analyzing the competitive position of the proposed automotive dual voltage electrical system architectures.
MSL’s work builds upon a unique combination of materials processing knowledge, engineering design practice, manufacturing process analysis, and environmental information to construct analytical tools for decision support and competitive analysis. To develop these tools, MSL has worked extensively to refine its extensions to classic engineering process modeling for the past two decades. Modeling elements have been married to elements of product design, material properties, and manufacturing assumptions to yield tools that can estimate the costs of product manufacture under a wide range of conditions. These tools analyze primary materials production, primary materials processing, component and subassembly manufacture, and end-of-life vehicle processing. In each case, these tools estimate the costs of production as a function of processing technology, material flows, operating conditions, and energy and capital requirements.
MSL also has developed techniques for understanding how markets respond to the different combinations of engineering and economic performance available by using different materials. Further, MSL researchers analyze the environmental consequences of materials and process choice, incorporating the emerging life-cycle analysis paradigm. These tools make it possible, when used with economic and engineering assessments, to develop robust, credible, and defendable product strategies that take life-cycle information into account.
Richard Roth is the director of MSL. For more information visit the web site at http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/www/msl/.
The Internet and Telecoms Convergence Consortium (ITC) is a sponsored research program at MIT consisting of industry and academic partners who collaborate on research into the technical, economic, strategic, and policy issues that arise from the convergence of telecommunications and the Internet. ITC is the principal research vehicle for the MIT Research Program on Communications Policy.
Internet Appliances and Applications: David Clark of MIT developed an architecture for the coming post-PC world and its impact on the Internet. John Wroclawski of MIT shared insights from his LCS project to develop an advanced mobile communications device.
Local Access and the Broadband Transition: William Lehr and Sharon Gillett of MIT collected and analyzed data on U.S. broadband deployments, demonstrating that population density and company identity were the strongest predictors of broadband service availability. Marvin Sirbu's team at Carnegie Mellon University modeled the cost of integrated services delivered over cable, DSL, and fixed wireless networks.
Global Internet Economics and Industry Structure: ITC co-sponsored two internationally attended workshops in this area: the Next Generation Internet Policy conference held in Brussels in September 1999, which brought together senior executives, policy-makers, and researchers to discuss the policy agenda; and the Internet Service Quality Economics workshop, held at MIT in December 1999, which brought together leading researchers from industry and academia to discuss new approaches to integrating economic and technical mechanisms to enable Quality of Service across the Internet. The effect of content delivery networks on industry structure was a particular focus of the January 2000 ITC members’ meeting, including guest speakers from Akamai and Internap.
Competition, Regulation and Convergence: Current Trends in Telecommunications Policy Research, Edited by Sharon Eisner Gillett and Ingo Vogelsang (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah NJ, 1999)
Gillett, Sharon Eisner and William Lehr. "Availability of Broadband Internet Access: Empirical Evidence" Presented at 27th Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, September, 1999.
Lanning, Steven, O’Donnell, Shawn, and Neuman, W. Russell. "A Taxonomy of Communications Demand." Paper presented at the 27th Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, September 1999.
Forthcoming books: David D. Clark, William H. Lehr and Lee W. McKnight, "Internet Telephony" (MIT Press)
Forthcoming papers: William Lehr and Lee McKnight, "The Next Generation of Consumer Broadband Access: Service Level Agreements, Bandwidth Brokers, and Exchanges" (28th TPRC, Sept. 2000) Sharon Gillett, William Lehr, John Wroclawski and David Clark, "Taxonomy of Internet Appliances" (28th TPRC, Sept. 2000)
Dr. William Lehr, an economist, joined the staff of RPCP as Research Associate and ITC Associate Director. Dr. Lehr studies the economics of Internet infrastructure provisioning, especially with regard to industry structure and business strategy and how these are affected by the changing landscape of technologies. He is also interested in the public policy and regulatory implications of these changes.
The Technology, Business, and Environment Program (TBE) studies the effectiveness of the environmental tools and practices available to management. These include conceptual frameworks like industrial ecology as well as design for environment approaches that incorporate environmental concerns into design decisions. TBE's research identifies the learning and the change firms experience when they embrace environmental policies and adopt voluntary codes of conduct. The program also analyzes how public policy can facilitate business efforts to adopt environmental practices.
Highlights of the year are as follows:
Next year’s goals are to continue these research areas, focusing on the role of a firm’s culture, business strategy, and technology competence in shaping how it interprets and manages its environmental responsibilities. A new goal is to launch a study of the implications of e-commerce, and the growing use of environmental management standards in supply chain management, on environmental performance.
John Ehrenfeld, Director of the Technology, Business, and Environment Program since its inception in 1989, retired in April 2000. Jennifer Nash, Associate Director since 1997, is Acting Director.
For more information, visit the web site at http://tbe.mit.edu/.
The Technology and Law (T&L) Program offers research opportunities and graduate-level courses focusing on the interface of law and technology. Research activities include the design and evaluation of policies that encourage technological change for preventing chemical pollution through regulation, liability, and economic incentives, promote environmental justice by involving communities in governmental decisions that affect their health, safety, and environment; and address the effects of globalization on sustainability.
T&L offers a two-semester sequence in environmental law and policy: Law: Technology, and Public Policy, a core subject in the Technology and Policy Program; and Sustainability, Trade, and Environment, listed jointly with Engineering and Sloan.
"An Innovation-Based Strategy for a Sustainable Environment," N. A. Ashford, in Innovation-Oriented Environmental Regulation: Theoretical Approach and Empirical Analysis, J. Hemmelskamp, K. Rennings, F. Leone (Eds.) Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, New York 2000.
"Encouraging Inherently Safer Production in European Firms: A Report from the Field" N.A. Ashford and G. Zwetsloot, Journal of Hazardous Materials, Special Issue on Risk Assessment and Environmental Decision Making, A. Amendola and D. Wilkinson (eds), 1999.
"Negotiation as a Means of Developing and Implementing Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety Policy," Charles C. Caldart and Nicholas A. Ashford, Harvard Environmental Law Review, 23(1):141-202, 1999.
Future planned activities include completion of textbooks on environmental law and policy; and globalization, technology, and sustainability.
T&L program is directed by Professor Nicholas A. Ashford and involves Charles C. Caldart, Research Associate, CTPID, and Lecturer in Civil Engineering. For more information, visit the web site at http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/www/tl/.
Fred Moavenzadeh
MIT Reports to the President 1999–2000