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Engineering Systems Division

ESD Created to Broaden
Engineering Education

Daniel Roos

In December 1998, the School of Engineering established a second new division, the Engineering Systems Division (ESD), which focuses on the engineering of complex systems. The creation of ESD responds to a need for the development of new approaches, frameworks, and theories to better understand engineering systems behavior and design, as well as a need within the School for the development and support of educational programs on complex systems and design synthesis that will prepare students for leadership positions. ESD is an integrative effort that cuts across the School of Engineering departments. In addition to the engineering departments, ESD works with the Sloan School of Management, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the School of Architecture and Planning to develop an integrative approach to engineering systems problems. Overall, the Division provides an institutional framework and intellectual home for engineering systems faculty to develop educational and research programs, facilitate the admission of students to various interdisciplinary academic programs, and provide governance on key issues such as faculty hires, promotion, and tenure. ESD also explores the changing roles and relationships among universities, industry, and government in all phases of engineering systems development. What follows is a discussion of the rationale for establishing ESD, its history, and its progress to date.

 

The field of engineering is changing rapidly. Systems and product complexity are increasing at an accelerating pace, as are the complexities of operating in an environment where technical, natural, and social systems increasingly intersect. In addition, the world faces unprecedented social concerns in an expanding global marketplace. Systems and products today must be environmentally benign and health-protective, and in some cases must even meet baseline aesthetic standards in order to avoid legal, political, and other barriers to success in the marketplace. This requires an integrative approach in which engineering professionals view the technological components as part of a larger engineering system.

In response to the changing design environment, some universities have developed systems-based programs. MIT has been in the vanguard of this effort with a wide range of systems-related initiatives in education and research. Five master's-level interdisciplinary educational programs at the Institute are serving over 400 students today. These educational programs include Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM), System Design and Management (SDM), Technology and Policy Program (TPP), Master of Science in Transportation (MST), and Master of Engineering in Logistics (MLOG).

Several research centers have also been active in focusing on engineering systems problems. They are the Center for Innovation in Product Development (CIPD), Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development (CTPID), Center for Transportation Studies (CTS), and Industrial Performance Center (IPC). These centers are interdisciplinary, involving faculty from engineering, management, and the social sciences.

The Engineering Systems Division (ESD), brings together these academic programs and research centers to facilitate cooperation among the participating faculty. ESD provides an intellectual home and institutional framework for the faculty to "go the next step," building upon the successful programs already developed.

ESD’s mission is to establish engineering systems as a field of study focusing on complex systems and products, where these systems and products are viewed in their broad social and industrial context, and to use the new knowledge gained to improve engineering education and practice.

 

Motivation for the Division

Industry has recognized the need to respond to the aforementioned new design and competitive factors and to have all of them considered in achieving design solutions. It is useful to look at these factors more closely in order to fully understand and appreciate the need for a more integrative approach in which engineering professionals view the technological components as part of a larger engineering system.

As an example of the broadened perspective of engineering systems, consider how changes in automotive design have motivated new educational and research initiatives at MIT. The automobile, once considered a technologically mature product, is now influenced by new technology, including lightweight materials; "smart" electronic components, and alternative propulsion systems to the internal combustion engine. The globalization of the automobile industry has caused locational shifts of both design and manufacturing facilities from a national to international context. Concerns such as quality, management of human resources, and time-to-market have motivated fundamental changes in automotive product development, manufacturing, and supply-chain design. And new approaches – such as just-in-time inventory control, integrated product development teams, and lean production techniques – have reshaped companies' automobile production processes, while social concerns such as air pollution, recycling of materials, global warming, and safety also have had a major impact on auto design and production.

Furthermore, design and manufacturing are only part of the automotive system. Government policies determine the role of automobiles in providing personal mobility, ensure automotive safety, and affect the impact of automobiles on the environment and urban development. The formation of these policies requires not only technical expertise but also an understanding of institutions, human behavioral responses and other non-technical considerations.

These changes in automotive systems have served as an impetus for the development, over the years, of many new MIT educational and research programs sponsored by automotive companies. GM, Ford, and Chrysler are members of LFM and GM and Ford are also sponsors of CIPD. Ford has the largest number of students enrolled in SDM of any company. Volkswagen is a sponsor of the CTS Supply Chain Management Program. All the world’s auto companies participate in the International Motor Vehicle Program at CTPID. TPP offers a proseminar on the electric car as an automotive system. CTPID has a global mobility program and CTS has an intelligent transportation systems program and numerous other transportation research projects.

Automotive systems provide but one example of how MIT has developed new educational and research programs that focus on complex engineering system problems. Increasing complexity can also be found in many other systems (e.g., telecommunications systems, energy systems, and aeronautical systems), which are the bases for similar programs.

These programs educate engineering systems professionals who view the technological system as part of a larger whole. For them, the context in which the system operates is a design variable rather than a constraint. Thus, they are concerned with the design of the organization that has to manufacture the product, the regulations and public policies governing its use and disposition, the marketing of it, and the relationship with suppliers, distributors and other participants in the value chain. From this perspective, the design process includes: the physical attributes which are the domain of traditional engineering; the process attributes, which are the domain of both engineers and managers; and the context attributes which traditionally have been the domain of managers, governments, and social scientists.

In spite of numerous accomplishments over the past several years, both industry and the academic community have been moving incrementally, largely independently, and with no widely accepted strategic vision of engineering systems to guide them. In the early stages of a major change in the practice of engineering, such incrementalism makes sense. However, with the experience base developed to date, the time is right for the first comprehensive effort to define the nature of engineering systems, and to encourage both industry and the university community to act on the resulting vision. Indeed, given the pace of change, the need for such an effort grows more urgent day by day.

Such an initiative represents a massive challenge. In the post-World War II era, MIT revolutionized engineering by developing engineering science as a new and broadly applicable approach in many engineering disciplines. The primary results of this effort were the publication of a now classic engineering science approach, and the impact of MIT graduates schooled in the new approach on universities throughout the world.

The move to engineering systems is expected to have similar impact; yet it also represents a considerably more complex undertaking. To be truly effective, engineering systems require leaders who are well-versed in a range of areas beyond the elements of the core engineering disciplines; these areas include management and the relevant social sciences. These new educational and research programs require different engineering approaches from those of the traditional engineering science paradigm – which has served as the driving force in the School of Engineering during the past several decades. We need to develop an integrative approach to engineering systems problems that considers the context in which the systems are initiated, designed, manufactured, constructed, implemented, and maintained.

 

What is the Engineering Systems Division?

In response to this need, ESD was first proposed by the Eagar Committee, which was appointed by the dean of Engineering in 1995 and chaired by Tom Eagar, head of the Department of Material Science and Engineering. The Committee concluded that to be a leader in engineering education and research well into the next century, MIT required a mix of faculty, staff, and students involved in engineering systems. Moreover, the Committee found that leadership in engineering education and research requires that MIT have strengths in as well as a balance between both the disciplinary aspects of engineering science as well as the integrative aspects of engineering systems.

A survey of Engineering School department heads and center directors conducted by the Committee found the School of Engineering had only about half as many faculty spending time on integrative activities in engineering systems as was needed. These current engineering systems faculty were too few and too dispersed among departments to form a critical mass. Additional faculty members in engineering systems were needed to work with the existing limited faculty resources. Furthermore, these faculty members needed an intellectual home for educational and research programs in engineering systems. The Committee therefore recommended in its August 1996 report the creation of a Division of Engineering Systems within the School of Engineering and the appointment of an associate dean of Engineering to head the Division.

ESD was described in the Eagar Report as "an organizational unit with porous boundaries that would cut across, and interact with, the eight engineering departments. An important function of the division structure is preventing the isolation of faculty in this area and the removal of valuable resources from existing departments that might occur with a departmental structure."

In September 1997, Dean of Engineering Bob Brown appointed Daniel Roos as associate dean of Engineering Systems and established the Engineering Systems Council and the Extended Engineering Systems Council. The Engineering Systems Council consisted of the heads of the interdisciplinary engineering systems academic programs and research centers in the School of Engineering. The Extended Engineering Systems Council was a group of approximately 30 faculty from organizations throughout MIT who had an interest in engineering systems.

At the request of Dean Brown, both Councils developed further the concepts of engineering systems and an implementation plan that served as the basis for the Division’s creation. That plan was discussed by the Faculty Policy Committee and Academic Council, as well as at the Institute faculty meeting. The Executive Committee of the Corporation subsequently approved it and ESD began operations on December 1, 1998.

Schematically, the interrelationships between the Division, the School of Engineering Departments, and other schools and programs are depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 2 depicts the organizations that are part of ESD. There are six units, four of which administer five different educational programs at the Master’s level. In addition, several discussions have taken place with the Operations Research Center (ORC), regarding potential cooperation with the ESD. Other units at MIT may decide to affiliate with or join ESD in the future.

An integrative approach to engineering problem solving requires a shared commitment between ESD, the Engineering School departments, and the participation of colleagues in the management and social sciences. As Provost Bob Brown has stated, "The School of Engineering is placing growing emphasis on engineering research and educational programs that integrate traditional engineering expertise with management and social science."

The School of Engineering departments have different degrees of interest in engineering systems. The relationship of the Division to each of the departments will vary depending on the departmental need and desire. The goal of the Division is to add value rather than simply duplicate what can be done effectively by the departments, the Sloan School of Management, the School of Architecture and Planning, or the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

 

ESD Faculty

ESD has a similar structure to the Division of Bioengineering and Environmental Health, which began operations on July 1st 1998. ESD is composed primarily of "dual" faculty. Such dual faculty will commit their time and efforts about equally between a department and ESD. In most cases, a formal 50/50 split of responsibility for academic salary, promotion and tenure, teaching duties, and a faculty member’s administrative responsibilities will characterize this. In other cases, faculty may have a traditional joint appointment with ESD. These faculty generally spend less than half time in ESD activities and their tenure line remains with their home department.

This split of responsibility is a formality (such as for accounting purposes) necessary for ESD to be successful. The objective is for ESD faculty to pursue activities that benefit both their home department and the Division and thereby add value to both units via the synergism which ESD is designed to promote. Furthermore, ESD faculty should be able to leverage the work of their departmental colleagues, thus adding further value to the departments, the Division, the Schools and the Institute.

That dual or joint appointments are shared with the departments is a distinguishing feature of ESD relative to traditional MIT department appointments. This is consistent with the concept that the new entity is charged with bringing engineering systems into the School of Engineering by interacting with the departments as strongly as possible. Symbolic of that commitment, two of the ESD faculty are current department heads (Professor Tom Eagar of Material Science and Engineering and Professor Ed Crawley of Aeronautics and Astronautics) and four ESD faculty are former department heads (Professor Joel Moses of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Professor Earll Murman of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Professors David Marks and Joseph Sussman of Civil and Environmental Engineering).

MIT faculty with ESD appointments are listed in Table 1. These faculty come from the Schools of Engineering and Management. We also anticipate social science faculty joining ESD from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Architecture and Planning.

The initial ESD appointments are all senior faculty members. There were discussions about also having junior faculty in the new division. Some felt that junior faculty should not be appointed in ESD since their tenure process would be more difficult; the junior faculty member would have to be evaluated by two different units. Others argued, as in any academic unit, the inclusion of junior faculty is vital over the long term in order to provide renewed energy, new ideas, and a constant evolution of the unit. In particular, junior faculty with fresh ideas are critical to an emerging field such as engineering systems and, therefore, they should be included in ESD. We decided that junior faculty could join ESD if a senior faculty member agrees to serve as a mentor and the junior faculty member is aware of the potential additional difficulties in the tenure process.

To respond to the current shortfall of engineering systems faculty, identified by the Eagar Committee, an ESD Faculty Search Committee has been established. Members of the Committee during the past academic year included: Professor Joseph Sussman of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Chair), Professor Tom Eagar of Material Science and Engineering, Professor Stephen Graves of the Sloan School of Management, Professor David Hardt of Mechanical Engineering, Professor Greg McRae of Chemical Engineering, Professor Harvey Sapolsky of Political Science, and Institute Professor Sheila Widnall.

 

Educational Challenges and Opportunities

The principal initial challenges and opportunities for ESD are educational. A first mission for the Division is an examination of the "systems" aspects of the five ongoing programs (i.e., what are their elements, what are their major interactions, etc.). From this, improved efficiencies and new intellectual pursuits will emerge. For example, LFM and SDM have recently decided to consolidate their administrative functions.

The key to defining and propagating the intellectual core of ESD is a coherent curriculum targeted at students with interests in engineering systems. Some basic elements of a divisional curriculum are in place, as evidenced by the numerous common topics among the programs included in ESD. However, most of the specific subjects have not been designed by the programs themselves, and thus were not intended to be part of any particular degree. Conversely, some subjects have been developed with a narrow view of supporting only a single program and do not have a broader intellectual mission.

Accordingly, ESD will support development of subjects directly tied to the underlying concepts of engineering systems while continuing to adapt and modify existing subjects through enhanced collaboration among the existing ESD programs. Consistent with the mission of ESD, all new subjects will be joint offerings, primarily with the engineering departments, but also in many cases with management and the social sciences departments.

The Division has recently begun a new project to develop engineering systems case studies to demonstrate the principle of engineering systems in a real world context. These case studies could be utilized not only by engineering systems subjects, but also by subjects offered by engineering departments.

 

Working with Industry

A common characteristic of most ESD research and educational programs is their deep involvement with industry, in ways that provide more than funding for the programs and employment for our students. These programs interact with industry and government to define research and educational needs and address the identified needs. ESD works with industry in a partnership mode where industry serves as a real-world laboratory to test new concepts, provide data and facilities, and help faculty and students better appreciate the context of their research. Several ESD academic programs feature an internship experience at an industrial site.

ESD units have formal ties to multiple enterprises and novel industry-academic relationships. Examples of industrial relationships include LFM’s industry partners, CTPID’s International Motor Vehicle Program and Lean Aerospace consortia, CTS’s Corporate and Public Affiliates Programs and its Integrated Supply Chain Management Consortium, SDM’s and CIPD’s corporate partners, IPC’s industry studies, TPP's student government and industry internships, and LFM's student industry internships. These programs explore new ways to work with industry and government thus providing a better understanding of the changing relationships between universities, government and industry, as well as better educational opportunities and programs for our students.

 

Conclusion

The establishment of ESD continues to keep MIT in the vanguard of engineering research and education. ESD will help to further the development of new approaches, frameworks, and theories to better understand engineering systems behavior and design. ESD faculty will develop and support educational programs on complex systems and design synthesis that will prepare students for leadership positions. And the Division itself will set the pace for evolving roles and relationships among universities, industry, and government in all phases of engineering systems development.

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