Engineering Systems Division
The academic year 2001–2002 was a one of significant accomplishment for the Engineering Systems Division (ESD) as we continued to move forward toward our goals of defining and evolving engineering systems as a new field of study and transforming engineering education and practice.
The faculty of ESD continued to expand. We are delighted to announce that the following have joined ESD's faculty and teaching staff.
George E. Apostalakis, PhD, received a joint appointment as professor of nuclear engineering and engineering systems in 2002. Professor Apostalakis's research interests include methods for probabilistic risk assessment of complex technological systems; risk management involving several stakeholder groups; decision analysis, human reliability models; organizational factors and safety culture; software dependability; risk-informed, performance-based regulation. His teaching interests include probability and its applications to risk assessment and reliability; risk-benefit analysis; and nuclear reactor safety.
Randolph E. Kirchain, PhD, received a dual appointment in 2002 as assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Engineering Systems Division. Professor Kirchain's research focuses on the resource intensity of the materials economies, including the robustness of material recovery infrastructures.
Seth Lloyd, PhD, received a joint appointment in 2002 as professor of mechanical engineering and engineering systems. Professor Lloyd was appointed full professor in 2002 and a principal investigator at the Research Laboratory of Electronics. Professor Lloyd has performed seminal work in the fields of quantum computation and quantum communications, including proposing the first technologically feasible design for a quantum computer, demonstrating the viability of quantum analog computation, proving quantum analogs of Shannon's noisy channel theorem, and designing novel methods for quantum error correction and noise reduction.
Christopher L. Magee, PhD, received a dual appointment as professor of the practice of engineering systems and mechanical engineering in late 2001. He is also director of the Center for Innovation in Product Development. Among Chris Magee's areas of expertise are vehicle design, systems engineering, application of computer-aided engineering and computer-aided design. The application of materials, vehicle crashworthiness, manufacturing product interface and all aspects of the product development process are also areas of significant personal experience and knowledge.
Frank R. Field, III, PhD, received an appointment as senior lecturer in engineering systems in 2001. He is also affiliated with the Materials Systems Laboratory and is senior research associate, the Center for Technology. Policy, and Industrial Development (CTPID), associate director of education, Technology and Policy Program (TPP), and senior research engineer.
Daniel Whitney, PhD, senior research scientist, CTPID, received an appointment as senior lecturer in engineering systems in 2001. His interests include agile manufacturing, the use of computers in product design, understanding the role of assembly in the design and manufacturing process, and understanding how companies decide what design and manufacturing skills and facilities are core competencies. In 2002, he received MIT's silver Infinite Mile award for institutional bridging, to honor his achievements in spearheading successful collaborations students, faculty, staff, and different departments within MIT, as well as with external companies and organizations.
In September, ESD offered its first post-doctoral associate position to a Technology, Management, and Policy graduate, Brian Zuckerman, PhD. Brian's work this year involved working with ESD faculty to develop the context for the ESD PhD degree program, as well as a redesign of the curriculum of ESD.10 Introduction to Technology and Policy. Brian also taught the last segment of the course. He produced a paper with Professor Daniel Hastings for the MIT internal symposium that used multiple disciplinary perspectives and analytical tools to analyze the national missile defense issue. Finally, he is working closely with Professor George Apostolakis and a group of other ESD professors to frame an approach to addressing counter-terrorism issues.
Currently, there are 36 faculty appointed—29 in engineering and seven in management. As a division, ESD establishes an intellectual home for key programs and centers, engages faculty across departments and disciplines, and fosters discourse about engineering innovation, all oriented around the issues of engineering systems.
The division coordinates academic programs with some 350 graduate students. The Leaders for Manufacturing, System Design and Management, Transportation, and Technology and Policy programs award masters degrees. PhDs are offered in Transportation and in Technology, Management, and Policy.
This year the division started a small pilot PhD program in engineering systems, which will be run as an interdisciplinary program. Four students were admitted. The ESD faculty and students will use this pilot to try out ideas for the full ESD PhD, which will be presented to the faculty next year.
ESD has four affiliated research centers: the Center for Technology, Policy, and Industrial Development; the Center for Transportation Studies and Logistics; the Industrial Performance Center; and the Center for Innovation in Product Development. These are described later in this report.
Ongoing Initiatives
Engineering Systems Learning Center
The Engineering Systems Learning Center (ESLC), which was established in AY2001, serves as a repository and enabler for cases, simulators, and other educational material on complex systems. Executive Director Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld has been working with Professor John Williams, ESLC staff member Betty Barrett, and many others in launching the electronic delivery system. Strong interest has been expressed by Cambridge University, under the auspices of the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) to partner with the ESLC in this process.
Work continues on the Sloan Foundation grant, with Richard de Neufville and Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld as co-PIs, in the development and delivery of what are being termed "Industry Engineering Systems Studies" for the auto, pharmaceutical, airline and aerospace industries. The resulting products will eventually become accessible online to a wide audience and used for instruction at MIT, other universities and in industry.
Engineering Systems Knowledge Network
A number of ESD faculty and staff are involved in activities of the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI). In particular, the CMI Professional Practice Program (PPP), directed by Daniel Roos on the MIT side, has a number of initiatives with strong links to ESD. The CMI PPP represents a portfolio of educational offerings targeted at graduate students and practitioners. Many are modeled after existing MIT programs, such as the Technology and Policy Program (TPP). With a collaboration that began in the summer of 2000, TPP is the most advanced of the PPP efforts.
Other ESD faculty are involved in joint curriculum development with Cambridge University colleagues to create case studies and other educational materials, and to develop modules, executive education, lifelong learning courses, and other degree programs, including a program modeled on MIT's Master of Engineering in Environmental Engineering. These activities complement the mission of the ESD Engineering Systems Learning Center (ESLC), and many synergies are beginning to be explored. The ESLC is well situated to serve as a central repository and sharing mechanism for a wealth of case studies and curriculum materials developed by CMI funded efforts in addition to the existing ESD efforts. ESLC is coordinating its efforts with other work at MIT on electronic storage namely D-Space, Sloan space etc.
New Undergraduate Systems Minor Planned
Professors Joseph Sussman and Deborah Nightingale led an ESD committee which developed the concept of a minor. The minor will broaden the engineering discipline-specific education in individual department majors to include systems thinking, design and analysis. The minor will address the multiple aspects of engineering. The ESD faculty approved the minor in January and work is underway to develop the core courses.
Engineering Systems Symposium Committee
The Engineering Systems Symposium Committee, cochaired by Tom Allen and Joel Moses, led a symposium in late May that was attended by about 60 ESD-affiliated faculty, staff and students. The goal of the symposium was to discuss the intellectual foundations of engineering systems. There were 31 presentations at the symposium and a proceedings containing 28 papers was issued prior to the meeting. Key intellectual areas that were identified for furtehr research were product development and system architecting, security and safety as system properties, flexibility, uncertainty and risk, sustainability, and systems theory and complexity.
The symposium was so successful that the ESD faculty decided to have a major international symposium next year.
Faculty Notes
Lean Enterprise Value was published (with Thomas J. Allen, Earll Murmann, Kirk Bozdogan, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Hugh McManus, Deborah Nightingale, Eric Rebentisch, Tom Shields, Fred Stahl, Myles Walton, Joyce Warmkessel, Stan Weiss and Sheila Widnall) by Palgrave.
Professor Thomas J. Allen received a doctor of engineering management degree (honoris causa) from Universitat Ramon Llull, Spain.
Professor George E. Apostolakis was reelected chairman of the statutory advisory committee on reactor safeguards of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission effective January 1, 2002. He continues to serve on the International Nuclear Technology Committee that advises the governments of three German states (Baden-Wurttemburg, Bavaria, and Hesse) on nuclear technology matters. He was reelected secretary of the International Association for Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management. He continues to serve as the editor-in-chief of the international journal Reliability Engineering and System Safety. He chaired the independent peer review panel that reported to senior NASA management on the probabilistic risk assessment of the international space station. He was an invited speaker at the fourth national symposium on space system risk management sponsored by the Aerospace Corporation and the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. He was an invited panelist at the workshop Performance-Based Regulation: Prospects and Limitations in Health, Safety, and Environmental Protection sponsored by the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University.
Professor Cynthia Barnhart, codirector of the MIT Operations Research Center since 1999, was promoted to professor on July 1, 2001. She was also named codirector of the Center for Transportation and Logistics, with her appointment taking official effect on September 1. As codirector with Yossi Sheffi, who has led the center since 1991, Barnhart's primary responsibility is to supervise the educational programs associated with the center—the nine-month Master of Engineering in Logistics program (MLOG), the two-year Master of Science in Transportation program (MST), and the PhD program in transportation. (Barnhart is, herself, an alumna of the last two programs.)
Professor Richard de Neufville was a visiting scholar at Cambridge University and lifetime fellow at Clare Hall. While there, he taught at the Judge Institute of Management and helped to get the Cambridge version of the Technology and Policy Program off the ground. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Delft.
Professor Thomas W. Eagar received General Electric's distinguished lecturer award.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Steven D. Eppinger completed his term as codirector of CIPD and assumed the role of codirector of LFM-SDM in June 2001. He is a half time faculty fellow with the Singapore-MIT Alliance and has been working on sponsored research programs with the Ford-MIT collaboration, SMA, and CIPD. His paper for the ASME Design Theory and Methodology Conference received the Xerox Best Paper award in September 2001. The second edition of his textbook, Product Design and Development (McGraw-Hill, 2000, with Karl Ulrich) has been translated into three foreign languages. The book is used by more than 150 universities in the US, plus many overseas.
Professor Daniel Hastings, director of the Technology and Policy Program and professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems, was appointed associate director of Engineering Systems Division. Professor Hastings will oversee all of the educational initiatives within ESD. He succeeds Professor Paul Lagace. Professor Hastings was also appointed as the chair of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. He gave the final keynote address at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Professor Randoph Kirchain published several papers, among them "Assessing the Strategic Value of Manufacturing Technology through Process Based Cost Modeling" (with Rich Roth, Frank Field, and Joel Clark), in Business Briefing Publications – Global Automotive Manufacturing Technology, World Markets Research Centre, London, England.
Professor David H. Marks was named head of MIT's new Laboratory For Energy and the Environment (a merger of the Energy Lab and the Center for Environmental Initiatives), which was formed on July 1, 2001. He was also appointed as Chalmers honorary doctor, May 2002. His research includes large infrastructures from economic and environmental perspectives. He has also been actively involved in the creation of Chalmers Environmental Initiative.
Professor Fred Moavenzadeh, James Mason Crafts professor of engineering systems, published Future Cities: Dynamics and Sustainability (Kluwer Academic Publishers). The US Army Corps's chief of engineers, Lieutenant General Robert Flowers, awarded Professor Fred Moavenzadeh the Bronze Order of the deFleury medal on May 15, 2001. Professor Moavenzadeh also presented at the Boston Post Army Corps of Engineers meeting (Engineers without Borders) and in Mexico City at the United Nations Development Program for Technology in Social Development.
Professor Joel Moses was named chancellor's distinguished lecturer at the Louisiana State University in January, 2002.
Professor Earll Murman was elected a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and received the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics undergraduate advising award.
Professor Deborah Nightingale succeeded department colleague Professor Earll Murman, as Lean Aerospace Initiative codirector. Nightingale shares leadership responsibilities with Professor Tom Allen, MIT Sloan School of Management and a third codirector from industry to be determined, a role most recently held by former Boeing executive Fred Stahl.
Professor Yossi Sheffi made several presentations. These included: "Combinatorial Procurement," at the Wharton Business School; "The Effect of the Internet on Supply Chain Management," at MIT's Technology Day in Tokyo, Japan; "The Effects of Terrorism on Supply Chain Management," at the CLM event at Cranfield Business School, England; and "The Impact of Technology on Supply Chain Management," at the World Economic Forum in New York City. He also taught an executive summer course in supply chain management and a CMI course in supply chain management (with David Simchi-Levi and a Cambridge faculty member, Duncan McFarlane); and published a paper in the International Journal of Logistics Management titled, "Supply Chain Response to Terrorism."
Professor David Simchi-Levi, together with Professor Charlie Fine from Sloan, established the "MIT Forum on Supply Chain Innovation" with funding from SAP and committed funding from British Telecom. His book, Designing and Managing the Supply Chain (with P. Kaminsky and E. Simchi-Levi, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, IL, 1999) was selected in the Business 2.0, December 2001 issue, as the best source for slashing time and cost and increasing productivity in the supply chain. In 2001, the book was translated to Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The second edition of the book is scheduled for publication in October 2002.
Professor Joseph M. Sussman received the Transportation Research Board's Roy W. Crum award, its highest honor, in January 2002. Sussman was honored for his significant contributions to research on railroads, intelligent transportation systems, and other large integrated systems. The Intelligent Transportation Society (ITS) of Massachusetts, the state chapter of ITS America, established the Joseph M. Sussman leadership award in April 2002. It was created in recognition of Professor Sussman's contributions to, and leadership in, the Massachusetts and national intelligent transportation systems field. This annual award is intended to honor sustained leadership performance in this arena. In addition, Professor Sussman won the MIT Technology and Policy Student Society faculty appreciation award for 2002 for his work in subject ESD.10, a new introductory required subject in technology and policy.
Major Meetings
Sustainable Mobility: Global Challenges for the 21st Century
On May 3, 2002, TPP hosted this symposium on transportation issues in developing and developed countries. The event was cosponsored with TPP, ESD, the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, the US Department of Transportation, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
Norman R. Augustine, former president, CEO, and chairman, and current chairman, Executive Committee, Lockheed Martin Corporation, spoke at the inaugural Brunel lecture series on complex systems. The title of his presentation was "Simple Systems and Other Myths." This event was sponsored by ESD.
Professor Sir Alec Broers, vice chancellor, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, spoke at the inaugural Charles L Miller annual lecture. His topic was "Insight or Invention? The Need for Collaboration in High Technology." The event was cosponsored by the Cambridge-MIT Institute, MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and MIT Engineering Systems Division.
Dr. Gerald Yonas, vice president and principal scientist, Sandia National Laboratories, spoke on "Sandia's Thoughts on the War on Terrorism." The event was cosponsored by ESD, CTPID, LFEE, TPP and Sandia National Laboratories.
Tom Burbage, executive vice president and general manager, joint strike fighter, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, spoke on "Creating and Maintaining a Winning Environment." This event was cosponsored by ESD and the student section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
More information on the Engineering Systems Division can be found on the web at http://esd.mit.edu/.
Technology, Management, and Policy
The Technology, Management, and Policy Program (TMP) is an interdisciplinary PhD program directed at producing world class researchers striving to improve methods used in defining and implementing policies for the intelligent use of technology. The program was established in 1992 and became a part of the Engineering Systems Division in 1998. The students within the program are motivated by their recognition of specific problems at the boundaries between technological development and social and industrial policy. The goals of the TMP program are to supply an academically rigorous environment within which these students, under the guidance of MIT faculty, work to extend the nature and purview of the tools needed to understand and address these issues.
The common vision of the program participants is that a dual competency in a technical area and in management and policy is the basis for the effective design of large scale systems. The research efforts within the program are leading to the development of a new paradigm for the planning and design of engineering systems—a paradigm that blends technical expertise with competence in economics, management, and policy to achieve a better adaptation of technology to societal goals.
Students are not directly admitted to the program; rather, they are first admitted to the master's program in Technology and Policy. After their arrival at MIT, these potential TMP students then prepare a case for admission to the TMP program, which requires that they construct an appropriate research question; assemble a cadre of MIT faculty committed to that effort and develop a proposed curriculum that will assure that the student will be equipped to address this question in a manner consistent with the highest academic standards of the fields represented. This admission case is then reviewed by the TMP admissions committee, composed of faculty drawn from the MIT Schools of Engineering; Management; and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.
Although the majority of the students in the program initially came to TPP solely for the SM in technology and policy, many of our students pursue a simultaneous second SM or doctorate in another discipline. There has also been an upsurge in applicants who have specifically targeted admission to TMP over the past three years. The program generally admits about five students each year, but eight students were admitted to TMP this past year. Students take approximately five years to complete their degrees and there currently are 19 students enrolled in the TMP program. Six TMP PhDs were awarded this year and these graduates have joined their 24 colleagues in careers in industry, academia and the government.
Marvin and Joanne Grossman have recently made funding available to help doctoral students travel to exchange ideas with doctoral students in programs with a similar mission to TMP's. This year, two students have just returned from the first international doctoral consortium in Delft, The Netherlands, where they gave papers and interacted with students from other programs. We look forward to using this funding to help our students to exchange information with other students, who have similar goals and interests.
More information about the Technology, Management, and Policy Program can be found at http://mit.edu/tpp/www/.
Technology and Policy Program
The MIT Technology and Policy Program (TPP) provides an integrative education to scientists and engineers who wish to lead in the development and implementation of responsible strategies and policies for exploitation of technology for the benefit of their communities. TPP's guiding vision is the education of leaders who are engineers and scientists.
The TPP graduate educational program in the School of Engineering acknowledges that the development of the skills necessary for effective implementation of technology tie into the emerging engineering systems educational thrusts and, consequently, TPP is part of the Engineering Systems Division (ESD) of MIT. The program focuses on providing a high impact, high quality education to its students. Its goal is to make TPP the most prestigious and sought after technology policy program in the world and to produce the technological decision makers of the future.
TPP sponsors both a master of science program and the Technology, Management and Policy (TMP) doctoral program. TPP receives most of its applications from outside MIT, but also has several internal admits each year, with students pursuing dual masters degrees simultaneously. Approximately, 35 percent of the students are pursuing dual degrees. This year, 36 students graduated with masters degrees in technology and policy and eight masters students were accepted to continue their studies at the doctoral level. Six doctoral students graduated during AY2002. This year's best thesis in technology and policy was awarded jointly to Ralph Hall and Natalia Ramirez. The TMP program has a current enrollment of twenty students, reflecting a steady state admission rate of about five students per year. Seven students received their technology, management and policy PhD in June 2002.
One-semester fellowship funding was provided to five incoming students, with partial funding provided to a sixth. This funding, which includes the Rabinowitz and deNeufville funds, has been provided by TPP alumni and donors, who make possible several other student benefits.
Samudra Vijay and Serena Chan received the Grossman award and will be using it to attend a conference at TU Delft, where they have been selected to present papers. In addition, through alumni and donor funding, the Technology and Policy Program sent seven masters and doctoral students to Carnegie Mellon University to discuss research, and sent another seven to the AAAS conference in Washington, while funding one of the many TPP students who attended the AGS conference in Costa Rica.
The Technology and Policy Program greatly values practical experience and actively encourages students to take summer internships between their first and second years of study. In January 2002, eleven students traveled to Washington DC to attend meetings with prospective internship employers. Partly as a result, many of our students found internships in Washington. Students whose internships were unfunded were able to take advantage of funding provided by TPP alumni and donors, including Larry Linden and Phillip Ng, in order to make their internship experiences possible.
This past year, the new subject ESD.10 was team taught by Professors Sussman, Hastings, Field, Oye, and others. Some additional fine tuning will be possible for next year, through the availability of curriculum development funds from the Lord Foundation. Professor deNeufville returned from his sabbatical with a revised ESD.71 curriculum. Student response to these two revised courses was enthusiastic, leading to Professors Sussman and deNeufville being awarded the faculty award by the TPP students. Professor Ashford won the first award in 2001.
The Technology and Policy Program has continued to work with the Cambridge-MIT Institute, and several faculty members traveled to Cambridge University this past year to participate in teaching several new courses. Cambridge University will admit full time students to its nine-month program starting this fall. The annual event this year was the Sustainable Mobility Symposium, held in May. This was well attended by students and outside participants. TPP also cosponsored two events with colleagues at Harvard University on issues of nuclear weapons policy and energy policy.
More information about the Technology and Policy Program can be found at http://mit.edu/tpp/www/.
Leaders for Manufacturing
The Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM) program is a partnership between MIT and over 25 global manufacturing firms to discover and translate into teaching and practice principles that produce world-class manufacturing and manufacturing leaders. This partnership is motivated by our shared belief that excellence in manufacturing is critical to meeting the economic and social needs of individuals, firms, and society, and that the health of companies operating in global markets is essential to society's well-being.
Now, in its 13th year of operation, LFM is a partnership between the School of Engineering, the Sloan School of Management, and leading manufacturers. Launched in 1988 with significant industry funding, the program emphasizes collaboration and knowledge-sharing with its partner companies across the entire spectrum of "Big-M" manufacturing enterprise issues. LFM supports students as fellows in the program with fully-paid tuition. The largest component of the educational efforts is the Fellows Program, a 24-month dual master's degree (SM in engineering and MBA or SM in management) experience, involving a single integrative research project carried out on site in partner firms.
Academic Programs
Forty-seven students in the class of 2002 completed the fellows program and approximately 80 percent have taken positions in manufacturing firms. Each of the 47 graduates completed an internship at a partner company during the summer and fall of 2001. Internships are focused projects of concerns to the partners, accomplished by interns with company support and MIT faculty guidance. Representative projects this past year included the use of modeling and critical operations data to optimize plant performance, applying lean manufacturing techniques for the design of an aircraft assembly line, and supply chain performance through forecasting.
Another 48 students (class of 2003) completed their first year of on-campus studies and are starting their six-month internships. Fifty-seven new students (class of 2004) were admitted and have begun an intensive summer session. The class of 2004 has an average of 5.5 years of work experience, representing the highest average since the program's inception. Don Rosenfield continues to serve as the director of LFM Fellows. Codirectors for the program include Paul Lagace, Bill Hanson, and Steve Eppinger.
Research and Knowledge Transfer Program
As part of LFM and SDM's commitment to lifelong learning, an initiative begun last year was continued to encourage LFM and SDM alumni to stay connected with MIT by sharing relevant information. Paul Gallagher, research associate for LFM and SDM, scheduled monthly webcasts presented by MIT faculty and various LFM and SDM alumni. The content of each webcast, also called e-seminars, provides valuable information on the latest trends, cutting edge developments and innovative strategies, all of which pertain to manufacturing and/or systems design. The presentations are given in real time, via the internet and telephone, which allowed participants to follow along visually and audibly as well as to ask questions.
Presenters have included Dan Whitney, describing a theory for designing mechanical assemblies to meet top-level customer requirements on key dimensions; Steve Eppinger on product development interaction patterns; and Steve Graves on supply chain modeling and optimization.
Due to the positive feedback, the webcasts will continue into the next academic semesters.
Outreach
LFM continues its leadership role in the National Coalition of Manufacturing Leadership (NCML), a partnership of 15 universities with joint management and engineering manufacturing programs. In conjunction with the NCML, MIT, University of Michigan, and Penn State University once again sponsored a recruiting forum, the National Manufacturing Recruiting Forum (NMRF), which was hosted this past year the University of Michigan. More than 300 students and 20 companies participated in last year's event, in which LFM makes a significant contribution to the NMRF by providing a robust, web-based interview scheduling system that increases interview scheduling efficiency. The number of companies dropped from the previous year's record high of 50 because of the economic downturn. The NCML meets twice a year to share curriculum, research, and program best practices.
Placement
LFM students, sponsored and non-sponsored, continue to be highly sought once they have completed the program. Partner companies as well as other organizations take a special interest in LFM students as proven by their commitment to speak to the class on various issues during the Pro Seminar session. About 80 percent of each class accepts positions within the manufacturing industry while the percentage of students accepting positions within partner companies has remained at about 50 percent.
More information about the Leaders for Manufacturing Program can be found on the web at http://lfm.mit.edu/.
System Design and Management
The mission of the System Design and Management (SDM) program is to educate future technical leaders in architecture, engineering, and designing complex products and systems, preparing them for careers as the technically grounded senior managers of their enterprises. SDM intends to set the standards for delivering career compatible professional education using advanced information and communication technologies. SDM was one of MIT's early entries into the field of distance education and remains the only degree granting program at MIT that can be earned primarily from a remote location.
The SDM program is a joint offering of the School of Engineering and the Sloan School of Management, leading to a master of science degree in engineering and management. Targeted for professional engineers with three or more years of experience, the program centers on a 13-course curriculum in systems, engineering, and management, including a project-based thesis. It offers three curricular options: a 13-month in-residence format; a 24-month distance education for company sponsored students, requiring one academic semester in-residence at MIT; and a 24-month on-campus program for self-supporting students who can obtain a research assistantship in one of MIT's labs or centers. The program was conceived as an alternative to the MBA for professional engineers, allowing working professionals to pursue a degree without interrupting their careers and relocating themselves and their families.
Denny Mahoney, director of the SDM Fellows program, completed his third year in that position, providing a much-needed stability to program leadership. Co-directors for the program include Paul Lagace, Bill Hanson, and Steve Eppinger.
Student Statistics
In January 2002, SDM admitted its fifth class, enrolling 27 students—a drop from previous enrollments. A team led by Professor Paul Lagace, Denny Mahoney, and Jon Griffith, director of partner relations for LFM-SDM, has been engaged for the past few months in an admissions effort for the January 2003 cohort. Final statistics won't be available until the application deadline closes, but numbers of applications have increased significantly with this effort. For the first time, SDM put on an informational evening for local MIT alumni and others interested in SDM. This successful event brought in more than 30 prospective students.
Admissions Statistics
| 1998 |
1999 |
2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
|
| Admitted |
58 |
47 |
50 |
37 |
27 |
| On-Campus |
16 |
6 |
14 |
8 |
7 |
| Self-Supported |
1 |
2 |
5 |
2 |
1 |
| Research Assistant |
12 |
2 |
4 |
3 |
1 |
| Distance Education |
42 |
41 |
36 |
29 |
18 |
| Company-Sponsored |
45 |
43 |
41 |
32 |
25 |
System Integration Project
This past year, LFM-SDM and UTC embarked on a new educational venture. UTC has identified 11 core capabilities that the corporation believes must be strengthened across all the business units for UTC to remain competitive in the next century. For each capability, UTC will partner with a university that can deliver the highest quality education to its workforce in each of these areas. UTC proposed that LFM-SDM serve as its partner for one of these competencies—systems engineering. UTC believes that much of the current SDM curriculum addresses many of the required capabilities needed for systems engineering that they have identified as important across the UTC business units.
The project team has segmented the educational process into three target populations—a group of experts enrolled in the SDM program, a second group of experts enrolled in UTC-MIT's systems engineering certificate program, and the managers/facilitators of those experts. The pilot year was very successful, with 11 students completing the certificating program and more than 35 managers/supervisors completing the six days of content in the manager/supervisor workshop. Because of the success of the program, the effort has been extended another year. The next cohort of certificate students for this year is at 18.
Distance Education Delivery
As MIT's premier degree program offered at a distance, SDM has recognized its leadership role at the Institute regarding the practice of distance education and is in a process of evaluating its delivery with the goal of increasing the quality of the remote learning experience while reducing costs.
Specific distance education accomplishments include:
- SDM's continuation to deliver the full range of SDM course offerings to all of its students
- The adaptation of other courses for the distance education medium of multi-point videoconferencing to as many as 15 simultaneous company sites
- Jan Klein's funding by NASA and Ford Motor Company on a project to apply her research on virtual teams to improving the SDM distance learning experience; she conducted a survey and will introduce and measure specific change elements into the program
SDM facilitated the purchase of a new videoconference bridge for MIT, which is now housed with the Academic Media Production Services. This purchase has moved a critical component of the distance education program—videobridging of classes—from an outside vendor to inside of MIT at a substantial savings to our corporate sponsors. The advantages of the MIT videobridge include being a single supplier for educational support (beyond network access) at MIT, a greater than 50 percent reduction in the videoconferencing related costs of distance learning and the flexibility of providing additional distance learning opportunities.
SDM will continue to explore effective ways of making course materials available to distance students.
More information about the System Design and Management Program can be found on the web at http://sdm.mit.edu/.
Center For Technology, Policy, and Industrial Development
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 that span social, natural, and technological interests. Established in 1985, CTPID hosts programs that address industrial issues in the aerospace, automotive, materials systems, mobility, telecommunications, environmental policy, and technology and law sectors. The programs generated nearly $8 million in research funding in FY2002.
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: Cooperative Mobility Program (CMP); Ford-MIT Alliance (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);
Program on Internet and Telecom Convergence (ITC, formerly RPCP); Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (P-STEP) co-sponsored with LFEE, and Technology and Law Program (T&L).
Center Accomplishments
CTPID works cooperatively with the Industrial Liaison Program to bring world leaders in industry to MIT through the Industry Leaders in Technology and Management Lecture series. This year speakers included Michael Eskew, chairman and CEO of United Parcel Service, who described his company's transformation from a package delivery service to a global information technology company. Vance Coffman, chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense, Department of Energy, and NASA contractor, described his concept of "Total Awareness: the Real Revolution in Military Affairs." Both talks are available on MITWorld at http://web.mit.edu/mitworld/.
CTPID is one of five selected early adopters of MIT's innovative digital archive, DSpace. The communications office has worked with CTPID programs to populate DSpace, troubleshoot development issues, and has provided an intellectual rights template for use by all faculty, which requests permission for published papers to be posted in DSpace and the author's own MIT web site. This innovation supports the DSpace goal of helping faculty retain and regain rights to their intellectual work.
A series of CTPID community lunches, which build interaction among programs, began in September with a DSpace presentation by faculty liaison Margret Branchofsky. Program presenters included Materials System Lab Director Richard Roth who discussed vehicle light weighting and alternative propulsion systems. Labor Aerospace Research Agenda codirector Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld presented work on a presidential commission white paper on prospects for the 21st century aerospace workforce. Technology and Law Program Director Nicholas Ashford discussed "Pathways to Sustainability: Evolution or Revolution?" CTPID Director Fred Moavenzadeh described his new work in the Technology and Development program on developing the Malaysia University of Science and Technology.
Program Highlights
The Cooperative Mobility Program along with other MIT researchers and consultant Charles River Associates developed a major new study of worldwide mobility trends commissioned by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Mobility 2001 findings include seven grand challenges: ensure transportation systems support economic development and quality of life; adapt the personal use motor vehicle to future needs; reinvent public transit; reinvent mobility infrastructure management; dramatically reduce carbon emissions; resolve competition between personal and freight transportation; and anticipate and resolve congestion in inter-city transportation.
CTPID, as a partner in the Institute-wide initiative, supports over a dozen projects and twenty researchers working on Ford-MIT Alliance projects. Negotiations are underway for a renewal of this strategic alliance. This year CTPID Senior Research Scientist Daniel Whitney was appointed project area co-manager for the Ford-MIT Alliance focus on product development process technology. Whitney leads the Ford-MIT Assembly Advisor project in this area. Whitney is currently completing a book for Oxford University Press based on his teaching and research in the Ford-MIT alliance, CTPID's Fast and Flexible program, and LFM-SDM. The Ford/MIT Nobel Laureate lecture series presented talks by Dr. David Baltimore, Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine, on "Building a Community on Trust," and John Hume, recipient of the 1998 Peace Prize, on "The Philosophy of Conflict Resolution." They are available online at http://web.mit.edu/nobel-lectures/.
The International Motor Vehicle Program welcomed returning sponsors to the 22-year-old program including Toyota Motor Corporation, Honda Motor Car Company, and General Motors Corporation. A new sponsor, the South Africa Department of Trade and Industry, also joined the program. Researchers from the 20 current IMVP projects shared new work with scholars and industry representatives from the UK, Europe, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, and the US in September. Matthias Holweg, who holds a PhD from Wales's Cardiff University, began a one-year Alfred P. Sloan Industry Centers fellowship with IMVP in May. Holweg is working on build-to-order research.
At the invitation of the Human Capital/Workforce Task Force, US Commission on the Future of the Aerospace Industry, Labor Aerospace Research Agenda researchers produced a policy white paper titled "Developing a 21st Century Aerospace Workforce." LARA also published a guide, Collective Bargaining in the Face of Instability: A Resource for Workers and Employers in the US Aerospace Industry and five case studies this year.
Deborah S. Nightingale, professor of the practice in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was appointed codirector of Lean Aerospace Initiative in February. In LAI's new phase, she will focus on an enterprise approach—working with corporations and associated suppliers to improve the design, fabrication, and delivery process of products. In June, LAI offered its first executive short course based on the program's new book coauthored by Earll Murman, Nightingale, and the LAI team, Lean Enterprise Value: Insights from MIT's Lean Aerospace Initiative.
Two aerospace industry leaders—the Boeing Company and Chromalloy Gas Turbine Corporation—joined the Air Force-MIT Lean Sustainment Initiative this year. LSI completed three studies and LAI Director Wesley L. Harris gave invited presentations at the Society of Automotive Engineers Aerospace Congress and Exhibition and the Caribbean Academy of Sciences Conference.
The Materials Systems Laboratory won two National Science Foundation grants in 2001–2002. The grants will support work next year on a study of the application of environmental life cycle analysis to the automotive industry and a study of resource use implications of emerging materials.
Research Program on Communications Policy and its primary program, the Internet and Telecoms Convergence Consortium, merged this year into the MIT Program on Internet and Telecoms Convergence (ITC). ITC's newest member companies include Fundacion Retevision, Marconi, Ellacoya Networks, and Zephyr Telecommunications. ITC Director David D. Clark addressed the 2002 MIT Research Directors Conference on "Securing the Future of the Internet," a prime focus of ITC's investigations in media regulation, spectrum allocation, and parameters of broadband competition.
CTPID and the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment launched a new initiative this year, the Program on Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy. The program aims to develop critical knowledge to aid private and government decision-makers, to understand regulatory impacts on industry, to propose alternative regulatory approaches, and to educate leaders to shape the future of environmental protection. A November workshop, "Environmental Risk Management for the 21st Century," gathered industry and government input on how MIT can contribute to improving environmental regulation and performance through research, education, and outreach.
Technology and Law Program Director Nicholas Ashford organized the Technology and Culture Forum symposium on exploring the many dimensions of sustainable development. The five weekly sessions presented distinguished American and European scholars' comments on growth/economy, environment, and employment as they are affected by technological innovation, globalization, and trade.
CTPID continues to play a key role in the Engineering Systems Division's development by helping to define the division's research agenda and contributing to its development. Both CTPID's research programs and 27-year-old graduate program, Technology and Policy Program (TPP), are now part of ESD.
The second annual TPP conference, titled the Sustainable Mobility Symposium, examined worldwide mobility conditions and challenges May 3. The symposium highlighted the Mobility 2001 report, commissioned last spring by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
Richard de Neufville, TPP founding director and professor of engineering systems, launched a new Cambridge-MIT Institute course. "Real Options for Engineering Systems" was jointly taught with Stefan Scholtes of Cambridge's Judge Institute of Management. Based on ESD.71 and developed with Materials Systems Lab researcher and TPP associate director for education Frank Field III, the course focuses on how to evaluate flexibility in the design of technological developments such as air transport, communication networks, manufacturing facilities, oil fields, power grids, and more.
In another Cambridge University connection, Field MSL researcher Joel P. Clark, and Cambridge professor M. F. Ashby coauthored "Market Drivers for Materials and Process Development in the 21st Century," which was published in September in the 25th anniversary issue of the Materials Research Society's MRS Bulletin. Find the article online at www.mrs.org/publications/bulletin/21stcen/.
The masters technology and policy program and the doctoral technology, management, and policy program enrolled 127 students in 2001–2002. Approximately 35 percent of the students are pursuing dual degrees. This year, 36 students graduated with masters degrees in technology and policy and eight masters students were accepted to continue their studies at the doctoral level. Six doctoral students graduated in 2001-2002.
New Books
Clark, David D., board chair and study member, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council. Broadband: Bringing Home the Bits. National Academy Press 2002.
Compaine, Ben, editor. The Digital Divide: Facing a Crisis or Creating a Myth? MIT Press, 2001.
McKnight, Lee W., William Lehr, and David D. Clark, editors. Internet Telephony. MIT Press, 2001.
Moavenzadeh, Fred, Keisuke Hanaki, Peter Baccini, editors. Future Cities: Dynamics and Sustainability. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.
Murman, Earll, et al. Lean Enterprise Value: Insights from MIT's Lean Aerospace Initiative, Palgrave, 2002.
Web Innovations
The web site for the MIT Program on Internet and Telecoms Convergence has been redesigned and expanded to include industry and technology headlines. The site links to slides from weekly research seminars, student papers, and research publications. Visit the ITC site at http://itc.mit.edu/.
A newly designed web site for the Labor Aerospace Research Agenda offers research and presentations developed since its founding in 1998. A new compilation of global industry employment data, case studies, and "Developing the 21st Century Aerospace Workforce: a Preliminary Draft of Briefing Materials for US Commission on the Future of the Aerospace Industry" are available. Visit http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/lara/ for more information.
The new International Motor Vehicle Program web site features an online archive of IMVP papers dating from 1990 to 2001, research news, and a password protected area for current research and presentations. Visit IMVP at http://imvp.mit.edu/.
The Cooperative Mobility Program's web site has been expanded from a program description to an active site featuring program news, publications, sponsors, and activities at http://esd.mit.edu/ctpid/cmp/cmp-home.htm/.
Honors
Lean Aerospace Initiative Co-Director Earll Murman, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, won a 2001 Royal Aeronautical Society written paper prize for an article coauthored with Myles Walton and Eric Rebentisch, "Challenges In the Better, Faster, Cheaper Era of Aeronautical Design, Engineering, and Manufacturing" published in the October 2000 issue of The Aeronautical Journal.
ITC's Ben Compaine won the AEJMC Robert Picard award for Best New Book in Media Economics for his work titled Who Owns the Media? Competition and Concentration in the Mass Media Industry.
ITC Director David Clark was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Family and colleagues of MIT Professor Wesley L. Harris established the Wesley L. Harris scholarship fund for MITE2S (Minority Introduction to Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Science), a summer program at MIT for underrepresented minority high school students.
Joseph M. Sussman, J R East professor of civil and environmental engineering and CMP researcher, won the 2001 Roy W. Crum award from the Transportation Research Board for his contributions to research on railroads, intelligent transportation systems, and other large, integrated systems.
Daniel Whitney, CTPID Senior Research Scientist, received a School of Engineering Infinite Mile award for institutional bridging at the second annual School of Engineering awards ceremony April 11.
T&L Director Nicholas Ashford, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has been elected chair-elect of the group's section on the Societal Impacts of Science and Technology.
Chris Magee, the Ford-MIT Alliance executive director for 2000–2001, was appointed a professor of the practice in mechanical engineering. Magee received the William Hunt Eisenman award from ASM international, the Materials Information Society for "innovative leadership in integrating advanced materials technologies, implementing system engineering perspectives, and applying computer-aided engineering tools to the development of worldwide automotive products."
CTPID Director Fred Moavenzadeh, the James Mason Crafts professor of systems engineering, received the deFleury medal for his service to the US Army Corps of Engineers. Professor Moavenzadeh has mentored more than 50 graduate students who went on to become Army engineers. He is developing a course on engineering leadership, in collaboration with the Army's ROTC program, the Sloan School of Management, and the Corps's New England district. He is also collaborating with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and USACE to explore an "engineers without borders" concept, a privately supported international relief organization.
Personnel
Professor Deborah Nightingale, from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, succeeded department colleague Professor Earll Murman, as LAI codirector in January. LARA codirector Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld has been named executive director of the Engineering Systems Learning Center, which is producing cases, simulators, and other educational materials on complex systems. Betty Jo Barrett, a postdoctoral fellow since 1999, is now LARA's project research manager. TPP Director Dan Hastings is now associate director of the Engineering Systems Division. Patty Proven joined the CTPID communications staff as assistant to CTPID, IMVP, and TDP.
Visiting Scholars
CTPID visiting scholar Carlos Rodriguez Casal, associate professor of electrical/electronic engineering at the Universidad Publica de Navarra in Spain, worked with ITC on legal and institutional Issues regarding location services for wireless communication through February. Ki-Chan Kim, director of the Institute of Industry Management and associate professor of management at the Catholic University of Korea, continued his work on automotive supply chains with IMVP. Sanyho Park, assistant professor of Mechanical Design Engineering at Korea's Chungnam National University, worked with Dan Whitney on research in computer-assisted design.
Future Plans
As part of a larger ESD counter-terrorism initiative, CTPID Director Fred Moavenzadeh and John Williams, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and engineering systems, began collaborating this spring with Sandia National Laboratories colleagues on technology issues related to national security. The ESD-Sandia team are planning a meeting at Sandia in August and a comprehensive workshop in fall 2002 to identify key research topics in this field.
LSI is developing support to found a LSI Institute in conjunction with the US Air Force and an industry consortium. The LSI Institute would focus on developing global partnerships to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of MRO delivery and to train and educated MRO leaders.
More information about the Center for Technology, Policy, and Industrial Development can be found on the web at http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/www/.
CTPID Program Reports
Cooperative Mobility Program
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 multi-modal 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. CMP compiles an annual mobility observatory that tracks innovative developments in transportation policy, management, and technology.
Program research served as the basis for a large-scale global study of passenger and freight mobility and a May 2002 Sustainable Mobility Symposium, the Technology and Policy Program's second annual conference. The symposium highlighted Mobility 2001, a report commissioned by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development as a first step toward developing a vision of more sustainable mobility in the future. Mobility 2001, prepared by researchers from CMP and other MIT programs and by Charles River Associates, is the most comprehensive and large-scale global initiative in sustainable transport.
More information about CMP, which is directed by Daniel Roos, associate dean for engineering systems, can be found on the web at http://esd.mit.edu/ctpid/cmp/cmp-home.htm/.
Ford-MIT Alliance
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 initial multimillion dollar, five year alliance began in 1997 with a focus on three research areas: product development process technology, virtual education, and the environment. Priorities include the study of engineering design and educational environments of the future and funding to support a major MIT-directed consortium to study and address global environmental challenges. An objective of the alliance is the development of effective mechanisms for longterm, corporate/university partnerships. MIT and the Ford Motor Company are currently negotiating a renewal of the alliance.
CTPID administers the overall grant and is home to several of the Ford-MIT Alliance projects. As part of Ford's 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. Janice Klein, senior lecturer at the Sloan School of Management, heads research on virtual teams. George Roth, executive director of the Ford-MIT Alliance program and research associate in the Sloan School of Management, also leads a research effort on the organizational changes implied by MIT's alliances with corporations.
Chris Magee, who served as Ford's executive director of the alliance in 2000–2001, worked to strengthen the linkage between MIT and Ford and develop new collaborative research areas. This year he joined the MIT faculty as a professor of the practice in mechanical engineering and now heads the Center for Innovation in Product Development.
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 Alliance use conferences, videoconferences, web sites, and virtual forums to communicate the results of this work to both Ford and the general public. George Roth services as executive director of the alliance. More information about the Ford-MIT Alliance can be found on the web at http://ford-mit.mit.edu/.
International Motor Vehicle Program
IMVP, the largest international research group studying and reporting on the automobile industry and its global milieu, this year has built sponsor support for Phase IV, titled Navigating Auto's Next Economy (NextAuto), launched in September 2000. Toyota Motor Corporation, Honda Motor Car Company, General Motors Corporation, and the South Africa Department of Trade and Industry have signed sponsorship agreements. A newly designed web site presents IMVP news for the public and new research papers and materials for sponsors.
Matthias Holweg won a one-year Alfred P. Sloan Industry Centers Fellowship to conduct build-to-order research at IMVP program headquarters at CTPID. Holweg, who arrived in May, recently earned his PhD from Wales's Cardiff University. He has worked with IMVP, Cardiff's Lean Enterprise Research Centre, and the International Car Distribution Program's joint 3DayCar Program. Holweg coauthored "Successful Build-to-Order Strategies Start with the Customer" in the fall 2001 Sloan Management Review. Susan Helper, IMVP principal investigator for research on e-commerce among second tier suppliers, has been promoted from associate professor to professor in the Department of Economics at Case Western Reserve University.
IMVP's NextAuto Phase provides industry-wide knowledge and insight essential to helping companies make strategic decisions. 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 '70s.
NextAuto reflects sponsor feedback urging IMVP to draw upon its historic strengths to examine the industry's next challenges. Through NextAuto, IMVP researchers and their industry partners will integrate research capabilities on the extended enterprise with the new opportunities afforded by e-business and catalyzed by environmental and sustainability issues. NextAuto research priorities include over twenty projects underway in 2001–2002 in the following research areas: managing the extended enterprise; benchmarking the value chain; modularity and outsourcing; R&D; product development strategies; building skills and capabilities across boundaries; e-automotive; e-supply chains and hubs; e-powered consumers/build-to-order; telematics; vehicle as IT/telecom platform; visions for a sustainable future; green drive trains; new materials, recycling, and environmental management; and mobility solutions.
Associate Professor John Paul MacDuffie at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School is IMVP codirector and Professor Fred Moavenzadeh is acting codirector. Donna Carty is program manager. More information about IMVP can be found on the web at http://imvp.mit.edu/.
Labor Aerospace Research Agenda
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 lean principles in the aerospace industry.
In its early phases, LARA administered a national aerospace survey to further the understanding of the impact of instability on employment and work practices in the aerospace industry. Working with the Lean Aerospace Initiative, several case studies and other reports have been developed to increase the understanding at the facility and individual levels. These include the following:
- Case Study: a decade of learning; International Association of Machinists and Boeing Joint Programs
- Case Study: transformation through employee involvement and workplace training: The challenge of a changing business context; Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power and the United Automobile Workers
- Case Study: employing activity-based costing and management practices within the aerospace industry: sustaining the drive for Lean. Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, Wichita Division, and the International Association of Machinists
- Case Study: fostering workplace innovation and labor/management partnership: the challenge of strategic shifts in business operations; Pratt and Whitney (UTC) and the International Association of Machinists
- Case Study: fostering continuous improvement in a changing business context; Textron Systems
- Case Study: from three to one: integrating a high performance work organization process, lean production, and activity-based costing change initiatives; Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, Wichita Division, and the International Association of Machinists
In 2001–2002, LARA also produced a white paper entitled, "Developing a 21st Century Aerospace Workforce," which was created at the invitation of the Human Capital/Workforce Task Force, US Commission on the Future of the Aerospace Industry. The LARA team is continuing to work with this commission as recommendations are being developed on intellectual capital and global employment issues in the aerospace industry. LARA also published a guide, Collective Bargaining in the Face of Instability: A Resource for Workers and Employers in the US Aerospace Industry.
LARA is an MIT-based team conducting research with funding provided via the manufacturing technology initiative of the US Air Force and other sources. LARA's coprincipal investigators/codirectors are Senior Research Scientist Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld and Professor Thomas A. Kochan. More information about LARA can be found on the web at http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/lara/.
Lean Aerospace Initiative
The Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI) is an evolving learning community that brings together key stakeholders from 25 aerospace companies, 15 US government offices and programs, organized labor, and MIT. LAI is a consortium-guided research program led by the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics in close collaboration with the Sloan School of Management, and managed under the auspices of the Center for Technology, Policy, and Industrial Development. LAI also collaborates internationally with the Lean Aerospace Research Program at Linköping University and the UK LAI.
The Lean Aerospace Initiative was born out of practicality and necessity as declining defense procurement budgets collided with rising costs and military industrial overcapacity prompting a new defense acquisition imperative: affordability rather than performance at any cost. The initiative was formally launched in 1993 when leaders from the US Air Force, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, labor unions, and defense aerospace businesses forged a partnership to transform the industry, reinvigorate the workplace, and reinvest in America using a philosophy called lean.
Lean is about people and processes efficiently delivering value to every stakeholder. This means achieving lean capability at the enterprise level. Creating lean enterprise value goes well beyond figuring out better ways to do the job right—it's also about doing the right job. It means eliminating waste with the goal of creating value, being responsive to change, continually focusing on quality, and enhancing the effectiveness of the entire workforce.
Today, LAI's community extends forward to the customer and reaches back through the supply chain. The consortium now consists of leaders and implementers from major US defense and commercial aerospace companies, suppliers, government agencies, organized labor, and MIT.
Through active partner collaboration, LAI functions as a real world laboratory. Resulting benchmarking data and other findings fuel an ongoing cycle of learning including the application of knowledge, assessment of progress, and continuous improvement. Ultimately this cycle generates new research questions leading to new results and lasting value. It also provides a foundation for more tangible and meaningful tools and products that enable lean transformation efforts across the enterprise—products such as the Lean Enterprise Model, the Enterprise Transition To Lean Guide, and the Lean Enterprise Self-Assessment Tool. LAI's research base also continues to fold into policy recommendations.
Accomplishments, Research Results and Knowledge Products
Through its ongoing Lean Effects on Aerospace Programs exploratory study, LAI has found strong impact from lean occurring from 1992 to 2000, with a large acceleration since 1997 representing as much as ~60 percent increase in inventory turns; 40+ percent increase in labor productivity (current $); and as much as 80 percent reduction in product development cycle time. This research also revealed that lean remained heavily concentrated on the factory floor. Basic lean changes still, however, benefit as much as 95 percent of shipped products and affects 40 percent to 80 percent of all manufacturing and procurement processes.
Other recently published research includes findings and recommendations in these areas: the internet as an enabler to the Lean enterprise; framework for comparing performance improvement programs; value creation in the product development process; fostering innovation across aerospace supplier networks; Lean thinking in aircraft flight testing; valuation techniques for commercial aircraft design; manufacturing system design in the defense aerospace industry; flexible manufacturing systems and value stream mapping; and valuation techniques for complex systems.
As of May 2002, the LAI student roster totaled 16 MS and PhD candidates: eight in Aeronautics and Astronautics; four in Technology and Policy; two in Technology, Management and Policy; and one each in Mechanical Engineering, the Sloan School, and a USAF research fellow.
Also as of May 2002, 57 MS and PhD graduates entered these fields: 12, government service; 10, aerospace industry; 15, consulting industry; 18, other professions; two, continuing studies at MIT.
Lean Transformation Tools and Products
In the past year, LAI has stepped up efforts to help transform the US aerospace enterprise by developing and deploying education programs as well as leadership and transformational tools including:
Transition-to-Lean Roadmaps—Supplier Networks and Product Development Alpha versions were released.
Lean Enterprise Self-Assessment Tool (LESAT) Version 1.0 delivered August 2001, public unveiling in November 2001. Developed in collaboration with the UK LAI, LESAT enables the leadership of an enterprise to assess the "leanness" of the enterprise as well as its readiness to transform itself in accordance with Lean principles and practices. The tool was field-tested over an 18-month period at AIRBUS (UK), BAE Systems, Boeing Helicopters, Dowty Propellers, FR HiTemp, GenCorp Aerojet, Hurel Dubois (UK), Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Matra BAe Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon, Rockwell Collins, Rolls Royce, Sikorsky Helicopters, Smiths Industries Aerospace, Textron Systems, and TRW Aeronautical Systems.
Lean Learning II Workshop—The race toward lean knowledge accelerated when 74 learners, change agents, and implementers from across the aerospace community, gathered for LAI's Lean Learning II workshop in Charlotte, North Carolina, November 6–8, 2001. The second in a series of activity-based professional development forums, this workshop emphasized both people and process, and focused on the organizational behaviors as well as specific tools, such as LAI's LESAT, that enable lean transformation. It also featured an emerging LAI product The Workbook for Change, a how-to soft skills guide.
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Lean Enterprise Value: Insights from MIT's Lean Aerospace Initiative (LEV), published by Palgrave in March 2002, outlines the core challenge for industry in the 21st century as the ability to identify and deliver value to every stakeholder and the subsequent requirement of lean capability at the enterprise level. LEV demystifies the three levels of enterprise, offers a value creation framework, and concludes with enterprise level Lean principles.
 Bob Nelson shares his enterprise perspective on what it takes to lead a lean transformation. |
Enterprise Value: The New Lean Horizon, the annual stakeholders conference held March 26-27, 2002, featured key lessons from Lean Enterprise Value and honed in on the larger concepts of what an enterprise is by looking beyond manufacturing successes to the greater opportunities associated with addressing an enterprise as a whole.
Speakers included Bob Nelson, corporate vice president for business strategy, Northrop Grumman Corporation; Carolyn Corvi, vice president/general manager of Boeing's 737 Program; Mike Fortson, director of JSF affordability, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics; and Ellen Plese, Atlas Program Office, Lockheed Martin Astronautics.
"Our experience with Lean principles has shown that Lean enables the cultural, process, and systems integration required to meet future customer requirements," said Bob Nelson. "Lean also offers a new common denominator."
The LAI-Defense Acquisition University (DAU) Strategic Partnership was established on May 22, 2002. LAI and DAU signed a memorandum of understanding to engage in collaborative work in two broad areas: acquisition research and curriculum development. Work started on development of a web based introductory learning module of basic lean concepts suitable for government, industry, or academic applications. Future work may include collaboration on the inclusion of lean enterprise perspectives in the DAU capstone program manager's course.
 Professor Earll Murman and LAI program manager Tom Shields (both standing) guide participants through the executive short course. |
On June 19–21, 2002, LAI presented its first Lean Enterprise Value executive short course to 25 leaders and implementers from aerospace. Designed and built around an integrated enterprise simulation game, this class encouraged experiential learning and immediate application of lecture materials. Content was derived from the LEV book beginning with an overview of lean fundamentals and culminating with a broad perspective of the integrated operations between the enterprise functions and their impact on achieving a lean enterprise transformation.
Moving Forward
LAI has taken flourished as a new model of industry, government, labor, and university partnership. But perhaps more importantly, LAI represents a true learning community with the ability to leverage multiple perspectives for longer-term solutions. Through this community, LAI is able to open and sustain knowledge sharing, create a common vocabulary, infuse new ideas into the industry, and enhance communication among all stakeholders. This accelerates lean transformation efforts by bridging sectors and cultures as well as organizational functions, layers, and competing interests. It also creates a system to rapidly diffuse best practices throughout the enterprise. Now LAI is poised to do for the rest of the enterprise what it did for manufacturing.
As LAI begins its next phase, the enterprise value phase, in September 2002, the consortium will work to shift mindsets away from silos and into the enterprise and to broaden LAI impact up, down, and across value streams.
LAI itself will model best practices by focusing on integrated goals, deliverables, and products that meet the needs of multiple stakeholders. As part of this vision, LAI is introducing the LAI Educational Network, a cadre of colleges and universities who can help to foster lean thinking through education while expanding curriculum development and delivery.
LAI Leadership
Effective Monday, January 28, 2002, Professor Deborah Nightingale, of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, succeeded department colleague Professor Earll Murman, as LAI codirector. Nightingale shares leadership responsibilities with Professor Tom Allen, MIT Sloan School of Management, and a third codirector from an industry to be determined, a role most recently held by former Boeing executive Fred Stahl. More information about the LAI can be found on the web at http://web.mit.edu/lean/.
Lean Sustainment Initiative
Established in 1997, the Lean Sustainment Initiative (LSI) mission is to enable a fundamental transformation of the US commercial and military maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) industries into cost effective, quality driven, timely, and responsive support enterprises. As a joint academic/military/industry consortium, LSI develops research-based recommendations for systemic change followed by the implementation of military/industry pilot projects to demonstrate the impact of the recommendations on the MRO effectiveness of the enterprises.
Two aerospace industry leaders have joined LSI, a development that signals firm industry commitment to streamlining the US Air Force's $5.4 billion dollar MRO operations. The Boeing Commercial Airplane Company and the Chromalloy Gas Turbine Corporation joined LSI in late 2001. In joining LSI, these industry leaders reinforce existing efforts to apply lean principles, processes, and practices to the sustainment operations, business processes, and enterprise integration that keep the backbone of America's air defense system—legacy aircraft like B-52s, C-5s, F-15s, F-16s, KC-135s—in the air. Boosting sustainment efficiency could increase the percent of US air war fighters that can go into immediate action within existing fiscal constraints about 75 percent.
During 2001-2002, LSI completed three studies: the impact of policy on the availability of materials and parts; identification of barriers preventing the flow of high quality data input to forecasting tools; and identification and quantification of goals, objectives, and metrics that drive behavior and performance at the flight line. Based on the results of these studies, recommendations for implementation pilots have been developed and presented by MIT for LSI stakeholder review.
LSI delivered invited presentations at the Society of Automotive Engineers Aerospace Congress and Exhibition, September 10–14, 2001, Seattle, Washington and the Caribbean Academy of Sciences 13th Annual Meeting and Conference, June 1–4, 2002, Mona, Jamaica.
The initiative produced several master's theses, white papers, and technical briefings.
Next year's plans include to expand the stakeholder base to include international corporations and more national corporations; to continue the development of graduate and executive level sustainment courses with analytical framework and case studies; and to initiate implementation pilots.
Professor Wesley L. Harris is the LSI director. More information about LSI can be found on the web at http://www.leansustainment.org/.
Materials Systems Laboratory
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. This year the Materials Systems Laboratory won two National Science Foundation grants. The grants will support work next year on a study of the application of environmental life cycle analysis to the automotive industry and a study of resource use implications of emerging materials.
For nearly two decades, MSL has addressed 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. MSL's research sponsors include major automakers and materials suppliers. Recent agreements with General Motors should provide MSL will the basis for doing more in-depth research into various aspects of automotive manufacturing.
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. More information about MSL can be found on the web at http://msl1.mit.edu/msl/.
Program on Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy
The new Program on Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (P-STEP) is an MIT initiative aimed at working with the US Environmental Protection Agency and industry representatives to improve environmental regulation and performance through research, education, and outreach. P-STEP gathered industry representatives and area researchers at MIT in November to discuss core principles through a workshop titled, "Environmental Risk Management for the 21st Century."
Technology and Policy Program masters student Lewis McCulloch, the program's first research associate, helped organize the fall conference and contributed to the P-STEP white paper, currently being circulated to 250 industry leaders. The program, jointly sponsored by the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment and CTPID, aims to promote innovation on three levels: development of improved analytic approaches and methods for risk assessment and regulatory instrument design; development and diffusion of new risk mitigation technologies; and communication methods for informing policy makers about the nature of the environmental risk and cost-effective means for reducing them.
The P-STEP research team includes CTPID director Fred Moavenzadeh, Materials Systems Lab researcher Joel P. Clark, and Frank Field III, CTPID senior research engineer. For more information, contact the codirectors Thomas Eager or Joanne Kauffman. More information about P-STEP can be found on the web at http://p-step.mit.edu/.
Program on Internet and Telecoms Convergence
The Program on Internet and Telecoms Convergence (ITC) is MIT's only sponsored research program focused on furthering the Internet's evolution into a critical, global communications infrastructure. ITC researchers and industry and academic partners investigate the technical, economic, strategic, and policy issues that arise from the convergence of telecommunications and the Internet.
ITC Research shaped industry practice, filtered hype, through reality checks and identification of real R&D needs, provided advance insight into emerging technologies and business practices andinformed policy makers, forestalling premature or ill-conceived regulatory initiatives.
ITC receives funding from a select group of large and small enterprises with a strategic interest in the telecommunications and/or internet arena. In 2001–2002 large members were British Telecom, Fundacion Retevision-Auna, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nokia, and Sprint and small members were Ellacoya Networks, Vanu, Inc., and Zephyr Telecom.
ITC Members Meetings
ITC held two members meetings for executive briefings and technology previews.
The two-day January 2002 meeting, held in Cambridge, included the work of ITC Director David D. Clark. His topic was "Securing the Future of the Internet." Homeland Security interfaced with the ITC in a talk by Robert Pepper, chief of the Office of Plans and Policy, Federal Communications Commission. Among the principal objectives of the Homeland Security effort are to secure the nation's communications infrastructure and to enhance emergency response through communications. Achieving these objectives involves many of ITC's core interests: media regulation, spectrum allocation, and parameters of broadband competition. ITC executive director Sharon Eisner Gillett presented "Business Models for Bottom-up Wireless Internet."
The June 2002 meeting was hosted by ITC member Fundacion AUNA in Madrid, Spain. The meeting's title was Divergent Convergence: Competing Visions for the Internet. Topics centered around two themes: focus on broadband and seeking the wireless internet. ITC associate director William Lehr spoke on "Implications of Software Radio for Industry Structure." John Wroclawski, research scientist at the Lab for Computer Science and ITC, updated the group on the "Personal Router and the Wireless Internet."
Seminars
ITC held weekly research seminars throughout the year, with presentations by ITC researchers as well as outside guests. Among the presentations:
- Craig Warren Smith, Digital Corporate Citizenship: The Business Response to the Digital Divide
- David Gabel, FCC's Unified Intercarrier Compensation Regime: Bill and Keep
- William Lehr, Interconnection and Access Price Regulation
- Mark Gaynor, The Effect of Market Uncertainty on the Management Structure for Network-based Services
- Peyman Faratin, Multi-Agent Negotiation
Publications and Awards
ITC researchers and affiliates published or presented research results in over 18 venues this year. Highlights were:
Clark, David D., ITC director, board chair and study member, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council. Broadband: Bringing Home the Bits, National Academy Press 2002.
Osorio, Carlos A., "A Contribution to the Understanding of Illegal Copying of Software: Empirical and Analytical Evidence Against Conventional Wisdom" Working Paper, June 2002. He also won a Best Poster award at the June Internet Society annual conference, INET 2002.
Benjamin Compaine received the 2002 Journal of Media Economics Award of honor which "recognizes contributions to media economics scholarship and to the development of the discipline during the careers of the recipients."
A completed study on internet appliances generated two papers: Gillett, Sharon, William Lehr, John Wroclawski, and David Clark. "Do Appliances Threaten Internet Innovation?" Also in IEEE Communications special issue, October 2001; and Gillett, Sharon, William Lehr, John Wroclawski, and David Clark. "The Disruptive User—Internet Appliances and the Management of Complexity" in BT Technology Journal, October 2001.
De Figueiredo, John, "Committee Jurisdiction and Internet Intellectual Property Protection." 2002.
Sirbu, Marvin, Carnegie Mellon University, "Fiber to the Home." Presented to the IEEE Ethernet in the First Mile Standards Body, 2002.
An ITC collaboration with the Sloan School, Political Science Department, and Media Lab, and seed funding from the eBusiness Vision Fund, produced the presentation below and a conference in October 2002: Siegel, Michael, Farnaz Haghseta, and Shawn O'Donnell, "e-Readiness Framework and Tools: Goals and Approach," Presented at the MIT Center for eBusiness Seminar, March 6, 2002.
ITC researchers presented three papers at TPRC 2001, Alexandria, Virginia: McKnight, Lee, Raymond Linsenmayer, and William Lehr. "Best Effort versus Spectrum Markets: Wideband and Wi-Fi versus 3G MVNOs?" Also published in the journal Info.; O'Donnell, Sean, Hugh Carter Donahue, and Josephine Ferrigno-Stack "Quality of service monitoring: Performance metrics across proprietary content domains;" and Gillett, Sharon, and Emy Tseng. "Unbundling Fiber to the Home."
Dr. David Clark, senior research scientist at the Lab for Computer Science, directs ITC. Sharon Eisner Gillett is executive director; William Lehr, associate director. More information about ITC can be found on the web at http://itc.mit.edu/.
Technology and Law Program
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.
Recent Publications
Ashford, N. A. "Justice in the Global Work Life: The Right to Know, to Participate, and to Benefit in Sustainable Industrial Transformations" in Proceedings of the High-level Conference on Work Life in the 21st Century, 15-17 October 2001, Helsinki, in People and Work Research Reports 49, the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, 2002.
Ashford, N. A. "Pathways to Sustainability: Evolution or Revolution?" in Innovation and Regional Development in the Network Society, Marina van Geenhuizen, David V. Gibson, and Manuel V. Heitor (eds.), QUORUM Books: Series on "Technology Policy and Innovation," Volume 7. 2002, http://in3.dem.ist.utl.pt/quorumseries/.
Ashford, N. A. "Innovation: the Pathway to Threefold Sustainability" in The Steilmann Report: The Wealth of People: An Intelligent Economy for the 21st Century Lehner, Franz, Charles, Anthony, Bieri, Stephan, and Paleocrassas, Yannis (eds.) Brainduct ® - digital edition, 2001 pp. 233-274, based on Ashford, Nicholas A., "Technological, Organizational, and Social Innovation as Pathways to Sustainability."
Ashford, N. A. "Implementing a Precautionary Approach in Decisions Affecting Health, Safety, and the Environment: Risk, Technology Alternatives, and Tradeoff Analysis" in the Role of Precaution in Chemicals Policy, Favorita Papers 01/2002, Elisabeth Freytag, Thomas Jakl, Gerhard Loibl, Michael Wittmann (eds.), Diplomatic Academy, Vienna, pp. 128-140.
Ashford, N. A. "The Feasibility of Encouraging Inherently Safer Production in Industrial Firms" Zwetsloot G.I.J.M. and N. Askounes Ashford, in a special issue on Safety and Design, Safety Science, E. Fadier, guest editor, in press.
Ashford, N. A. "Government and Innovation in Europe and North America," special issue on ecological modernization, Sonnenfeld, David and Mol, Arthur, (Eds.) American Behavioral Scientist, Volume 45, No. 9, pp. 1417-1434, 2002.
Now available in PDF "Public Participation in Contaminated Communities" at http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/www/tl/TL-pub-PPCC.html.
More information about T&L can be found on the web at http://web.mit.edu/ctpid/www/tl/.
Center for Transportation and Logistics
In June, the center changed its name to the Center for Transportation and Logistics. The change in name reflects the center's efforts to expand its focus on logistics and supply chain management.
Established in 1973 to develop and coordinate the wide range of transportation-related activity at MIT, the center provides a focal point for transportation education, facilitates transportation research, conducts an outreach program to the transportation industry, and encourages a sense of common purpose among the many departments, centers and laboratories involved in transportation and logistics at MIT.
On our web site there is a wealth of information about the center and its programs, including descriptions of current research projects, and a listing of MIT theses in transportation since 1980. Transportation faculty and research staff are also listed with their areas of interest, along with connections to other interesting resources on the web. The URL is http://web.mit.edu/ctl/www/.
Education
Thirty-two new students arrived on campus this fall to enter the center's new Master of Engineering in Logistics program, an intensive nine-month degree track preparing graduates for logistics management careers in manufacturing, distribution, retail, transportation and logistics organizations.
Again this year, because of the high quality of applications, qualifying for graduate admission for transportation studies was increasingly difficult. This year, 170 applications were received for graduate studies in transportation—including the Master of Science in Transportation (MST), the Master of Engineering in Logistics (MLOG) and the PhD programs—and 94 students were enrolled in AY2002. Funding was found for 64 percent of the students.
Research
During the past academic year, over 100 projects were posted on the center's current research listing, organized in thirteen categories and representing the work of more than 50 researchers in more than a dozen departments and research centers. Many of those entries were research programs which included within them still more individual projects.
Major New Projects
MIT embarked upon a project with the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center and the Logistics Management Institute to assess the effects of alternate technology and policy options on aviation-related emissions. The model they are developing will be able to analyze aircraft, airport, regional and global issues in terms of performance, fuel burn, emissions, traffic and traffic growth.
The center was named as the new seat of the FAA Center for Excellence at MIT focusing on the development and use of operations research to address specific issues in air traffic control; human-in-the-loop systems; system performance and assessment; flow control and scheduling; operations research and simulation tools; governmental and user communications; navigation, communication and data; software certification and reliability; and aviation safety.
Major Meetings and Audio Conferences
On January 10, an affiliates seminar was held at the MIT faculty club exploring dynamic pricing techniques and their impact on supply chain management. Speakers included David Simchi-Levi, professor of engineering systems; Peter Belobaba, principal research scientist; Scott Friend, CEO of ProfitLogic; and Blair Pomeroy, global director of airline strategy, Accenture.
On March 19–20, an affiliates seminar was held at the MIT faculty club examining the different options available to increase the effectiveness of spare parts inventory. Speakers included Bob Stoffel, senior vice president of service parts logistics, UPS; David Simchi-Levi, professor of engineering systems; Mike Landry, CEO and founder, Servigistics; Larry Newbanks, manager, inventory technology research, Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc.; Stephen Graves, Abraham J. Siegel professor of management at MIT; and Derrick Redding, MLOG candidate at MIT.
On May 20–21, an affiliates seminar was held at the MIT faculty club featuring insights on using service as a competitive weapon. Speakers included MIT lecturer Dr. Jonathan Byrnes; Bill Homa, CIO, Hannaford Brothers; Tom Gormley, MIT Center for Information Systems Research; John S. Stanley, COO and deputy director for operations, Boston Museum of Fine Arts; John Wass, CEO, SwiftRivers; and Rex Williams, general manager, GE Engines Services Inc
The Inaugural Luncheon of the Horace B. Deets Lecture Series, Aging: Looking to the Future, was held May 7, 2002. Featured speakers included Horace Deets, retired executive director of the AARP; Thomas Perls, M.D., associate professor of medicine and director, New England Centenarian Study, Boston University Medical School (What Can We Learn from Today's Centenarian for Tomorrow's Older Boomers?); and Richard Weinshilboum, MD, professor of molecular pharmacology, experimental therapeutics and internal medicine, Mayo Medical School and Mayo Clinic (Pharmacogenomics: Inheritance and Drug Response). There were 115 individuals who participated.
The affiliates program in logistics held its first audio conference in September on benchmarking in logistics. In attendance at the MIT end were Ed Schuster, director of the affiliates program; Jim Rice, director of MIT's Integrated Supply Chain Management; Deborah Hoffmann, research director for benchmarking practice at AMR Research, and Larry Lapide, vice president and general manager for benchmarking services at AMR Research. Scattered about the country at about 35 other locations, with as many as four in attendance at each location, were representatives of 15 member companies.
On November 20, the center conducted an audio conference with John Heywood, director of MIT's Sloan Automotive Laboratory, discussing engines and fuels for future transportation systems, including both conventional and new types of internal combustion engines. Twelve corporate members of the center's affiliates program in logistics took part at 19 different ports in the US and abroad.
On November 2, the center conducted an audio conference on global terrorism and its impact on supply chain management. Taking part at the MIT end were lecturer Jonathan Byrnes, Yossi Sheffi, and Barry Pozen, professor of political science.
Smaller Functions
The Distinguished Speaker series featured the following:
- September 28, Mr. Pierre Jeanniot, director general (CEO) of the International Air Transport Association, "Airlines, Growth, and Iata—A Success Story"
- October 12, José M. Izquierdo, secretary of transportation and public works of Puerto Rico, "A Vision for Public Transportation in San Juan Metropolitan Area (Sjma)"
- October 19, Joseph Barr, Community Development Department, Environmental and Transportation Planning, Cambridge, Massachusetts, "A Local Perspective: Transportation Planning in the City of Cambridge"
- November 2, Jonathon Richmond, author of The Private Provision of Public Transport "The Private Provision of Public Transport"
- November 9, Kevin Murphy, managing director, Morgan Stanley senior airlines analyst, "The Airline Industry and the Capital Markets: A Wall Street Perspective"
- November 16, Peter Calcaterra, PE MBTA project manager for the urban ring, and James Doyle, AICP, project manager, Earth Tech, Inc., "Transit Improvements in the Urban Ring Corridor"
- November 30, Carol Schweiger, senior associate, Multisystems, Inc, "Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS): They Are Not Just for Highways"
- December 14, Mike Mulhern, acting general manager, MBTA "Bus Rapid Transit for the Silver Line"
- February 8, John Lanigan, CEO of Logistics.Com, "The State of Logistics Technology: David vs. Goliath, Asp vs. Package Software and Other Stories from the Land of the Start-Up"
- February 15, Scheffer Lang, chairman of the board, Taxi 2000 Corporation, and Ed Anderson, president and CEO, Taxi 2000 Corporation, "Personal Rapid Transit Technology and the Transformation of 21st Century Cities"
- March 3, Ennio Cascetta, Department of Transportation Engineering, University of Naples, "A New Role for Public Transportation Systems: Projects and Experiences of the Regione Campania"
- March 8, Dee Biggs, director of logistics, Welch's, "Issues and Opportunities in the Grocery Industry Supply Chain"
- March 15, Dennis P. Coffey, manager of business affairs and governmental relations, HNTB Corporation, "Railroads, Highways, Communities and Public Policy"
- March 18, Krish Srinivasan, manager and consultant, "Leading Logistics Companies–Caterpillar"
- April 5, Hank Lavery, president, Lavery Logistics, "Evolution and Future of Electronic Standards in e-Commerce and Supply Chain Management"
- April 5, Dr. Nicole Adler, School of Business Administration, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "Airline Hub Competition and Profitability in Western Europe—Nash Best-Response Games and the Search for Industrial Equilibria"
- April 9, Dr. Asok K. Chaudhuri, vice president, finance and planning, CSX Corporation, "Quantitative Management: an Industry Perspective"
- April 19, Robert Obee, vice president and CIO, Roadway Express, "Operations Research in Transportation: It Ain't Rocket Science (It's Not That Easy!)"
- April 19, Dr. Anthony Perl, associate professor of political science at the University of Calgary, "Rethinking Passenger Rail Policy in the United States: Before It's Too Late"
- April 26, William Copacino, global managing partner of Accenture's supply chain service line, "Directions in Supply Chain Management"
- May 3, Andrea D'amato, chief, Department of Environmental Services, and transportation commissioner, City of Boston, "Urban Transportation"
- May 10, Dr. Ashish Sen, director, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, US Department of Transportation, "The Bureau of Transportation Statistics: Setting the Direction"
- May 16, Per Heidenreich, founder/CEO of Heidenreich Marine Inc., "Logistics"
- May 17, Martin Knopp, director, Utah Department of Transportation ITS Division, "ITS and the Olympics: Making It All Work"
On January 15, the center held its annual reception for students and alumni in conjunction with the Transportation Research Board annual meeting. The meeting was attended by more than 150 students, alumni and affiliates.
An open house for admitted students was held in April to offer the opportunity to learn more about the center's degree programs in transportation, and to meet some of the faculty and staff. The event was attended by 24 prospective students, and helped many of them make their decision to attend MIT in the fall of 2002.
Affiliates Program in Logistics
The affiliates program in logistics was established in 1981 to develop relationships between MIT and the private sector transportation and logistics industries. The program helps support research that is of particular interest to private sector organizations and which contributes significantly to improved educational programs for private sector management. The affiliates program serves its members through a series of symposiums that cover a broad expanse of critical leading edge topics and issues for companies that ship and carry products and materials. Three firms joined the program this year—the New York City Transit joined in May 2001, Physician Sales and Service, Inc. World Medical joined in October 2001, and Tata Steel joined in April 2002.
Integrated Supply Chain Management Program
Since its inception in FY1995, the Integrated Supply Chain Management Program has maintained a small but solid set of sponsors, now including Avaya, Helix Technology, Intel Corporation, Lucent Technologies, Monsanto, and Procter & Gamble. The consortium has been productive in funding research over the course of its seven years of operation, with most recent funding supporting the supply chain visualization project, Professor Charles Fine as well as CTL research in supply chain management. The consortium has recently included events that bring sponsors together at sponsor company locations, and Procter & Gamble hosted the consortium at its Beckett Ridge Institute for Consumer Research in October 2001.
Professional Education
Logistics and Supply Chain Management: Thought Leadership (June 10–14); Airport Systems Planning, Design and Management (September 30–October 4); Modeling and Simulation for Intelligent Transportation Systems (July 29–August 2); Individual Choice Behavior: Theory and Application of Discrete Choice Analysis to Consumer Demand and Market Share (June 10–June 15); Modeling and Simulation for Intelligent Transportation Systems (July 29–August 2).
Personnel Changes
Cynthia Barnhart, codirector of the Operations Research Center since 1999, was named codirector of the Center for Transportation and Logistics. Her appointment took official effect on September 1. As codirector with Yossi Sheffi, who has led the center since 1991, Barnhart's primary responsibility is to supervise the educational programs associated with the center—the nine-month Master of Engineering in Logistics program (MLOG), the two-year Master of Science in Transportation program (MST), and the PhD program in transportation. Barnhart is, herself, an alumna of the last two programs.
At the end of summer 2001, Tom Sheridan, Ford professor of engineering, became the Ford professor of engineering emeritus, marking a change in his longtime association with the center. While Sheridan continues to participate in MIT AgeLab research, his Human/Machine Systems Laboratory closed, and two of his projects in advanced rail systems were taken over by Jim Kuchar, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics.
Masha Maltz has been added to the center's staff to support the driving research at the AgeLab.
Recognition
Five of the center's affiliates were honored at the annual meeting of INFORMS, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. Professor Amedeo Odoni was awarded the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement award in Transportation Science, granted to an individual who throughout his or her career has made fundamental and sustained contributions to transportation science, and has influenced the field through his or her writings, teaching, service and nurturing of younger professionals. MIT student Joan Walker won first prize for her dissertation "Extended Discrete Models: Integrated Framework, Flexible Error Structures, and Latent Variables," and Professor Andrew Armacost and alumnus Jon Bottom also won honorable mentions in that competition. Armacost also won first prize in the George B. Dantzig dissertation competition—which honors the best dissertation in any area of operations research and the management sciences—for "Composite Variable Formulation for Express Shipment Service Network Design. Arnold Barnett, George Eastman professor of management science at MIT's Sloan School of Management, won the Expository Writing award for demonstrating a consistently high standard of expository writing.
Joseph Sussman, JR East professor of civil and environmental engineering, was named the 2001 recipient of the Roy W. Crum award by the Transportation Research Board. Sussman was honored at the annual meeting in January for his significant contributions to research on railroads, intelligent transportation systems and other large integrated systems. His influential research on railroads has focused on operations, maintenance, service reliability, and risk assessment for freight and high-speed passenger service. He currently serves as the director of the AAR Affiliated Laboratory at MIT.
Sarah Bush, a PhD candidate in transportation, was named Outstanding Student of the Year 2002 by the New England University Transportation Center at MIT. She was selected based upon a regional competition that included graduate students from MIT and Harvard University plus the six New England state universities. She was honored, along with all of the national UTC award winners, at a US DOT special awards ceremony in Washington DC in January 2002.
Henry Marcus, professor of marine systems in MIT's Department of Ocean Engineering, was appointed to the Marine Transportation System National Advisory Council (MTSNAC). Chartered by the Department of Transportation in January 2000, the council serves as a non-federal deliberative body to advise the secretary on matters related to the marine transportation system—waterways and ports, and their intermodal connectors.
More information about the Center for Transportation and Logistics can be found on the web at http://web.mit.edu/ctl/.
Industrial Performance Center
The MIT Industrial Performance Center (IPC) is dedicated to the study of industries in the United States and in other advanced economies. The center brings together the intellectual resources of MIT in a search for fresh insights into the nature and origins of successful industrial performance. Through our research we seek to help leaders in business, labor, government, and the universities better understand global industrial development and to work with them to develop practical new approaches for strengthening public policies, business strategies, technical practices, and educational programs. With the participation of about 30 faculty members and more than 50 students from every school, the center today serves as a listening post on industry, monitoring and interpreting industrial trends, techniques, and patterns of organization.
Research Highlights
The center's research is organized around three major themes: technology and the changing American workplace; systems and strategies for innovation; and globalization and its implications for industries and societies.
This year the center launched a major new research program on local innovation systems. An international team of researchers led by Professor Richard Lester is studying the conditions of innovation in selected industries in more than a dozen regions around the world, including locations in the United States, Finland, Japan, Taiwan, Ireland, and Israel. A particular focus is on the role of research universities as contributors to innovation and economic growth in these regions. The team includes researchers from the University of Tampere, Helsinki University of Technology, and the University of Tokyo as well as the IPC, and is sponsored by government agencies in several countries.
The center continues its studies of globalization. The term globalization refers to the set of changes in the international economy that are tending towards the creation of a single world market for capital, goods, and services. In each of these dimensions, globalization raises new challenges for sustaining innovation, growth, societal well being, and broad political legitimacy in the nations it encompasses. The IPC globalization study focuses on one aspect of these developments: the fragmentation of the production systems of firms in the advanced economies, and the relocation of parts of these enterprises to other societies. Research on this topic is currently underway in the United States, Europe, Japan, Mexico, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Latin America. The IPC globalization study team is led by Professor Suzanne Berger (Political Science), and also includes Professors Tayo Akinwande (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), Don Lessard (Sloan), Richard Lester (Nuclear Engineering), Charles Sodini (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), Edward Steinfeld (Sloan), IPC research associate Tim Sturgeon, and several doctoral students, and also includes research affiliates from Germany, Japan, and Taiwan. As part of this research, a World Bank-sponsored study of East Asian supply chains in the electronics, automobile, and apparel industries was conducted by Professor Richard Lester, Dr. Tim Sturgeon, and several IPC graduate students.
This year the IPC received a founding grant from the Hewlett Foundation for a second research initiative related to globalization. The Globalization, Economic Development, and Standards Project focuses on the investment and contracting practices of multi-national corporations in emerging economies, the implications of these practices for sustainable economic development, and the role of labor and environmental standards and related codes of conduct. The research is led by Professor Richard Locke (Sloan and Political Science), and participating faculty include Professors Joshua Cohen (Political Science), Thomas Kochan (Sloan), Robert McKersie (Sloan), Michael Piore (Economics), Dara O'Rourke (Urban Studies and Planning), Judith Tendler (Urban Studies and Planning), and Balakrishnan Rajagopal (Urban Studies and Planning).
People
Visitors to the IPC this year included Patrick Le Quement, senior vice president for corporate design at Renault, who delivered a series of lectures and seminars on creativity in design and management; Professor Alok Chakrabarti, founding dean of the School of Management at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, who held a Sloan Industries fellowship at the center for 2001–2002, and Ms. Helene Grela, of the Institute d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, who conducted research on outsourcing in the automobile industry.
Professor Suzanne Berger was a visiting professor at Ecole Polytechnique and at Sciences Po in Paris in 2001–2002 and presented lectures on globalization at several leading universities throughout Europe. Her book based on these lectures, Le Première Mondialisation, will shortly be published by Editions du Seuil.
During academic year 2001–2002 the center awarded three new IPC doctoral fellowships. Raja Shankar received a fellowship to pursue his research on economic development through local knowledge accumulation by studying the Indian software industry. Sarah Kaplan was awarded a fellowship to carry out her research on how firms make strategy in periods of high technological uncertainty. Xudong Gao received a fellowship to pursue his research on explaining different patterns of technological capability development in China's electronics industries. Also this year, IPC doctoral student Douglas Fuller was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to continue his research on innovation and industrialization in China and Taiwan; and IPC doctoral student Carlos Martinez-Vela received a Martin fellowship in sustainable development.
More information on the Industrial Performance Center can be found at http://web.mit.edu/ipc/www/.
Center for Innovation in Product Development
The Center for Innovation in Product Development (CIPD) links representatives from academia, industry, and government who share our dynamic vision of the future of product development—new products will be developed by just-in-time collaborations of globally distributed teams linked seamlessly by web-based tools and processes. These collaborations will be formed by means of a services marketplace, where lead firms will find the world's best suppliers of information, components, and support services.
CIPD's mission is to lay the conceptual groundwork for, and contribute core components to, a product development infrastructure that will help companies to thrive in the new services marketplace. Using industrial sites as our laboratories, we work with engineers and managers in product development environments to extend our understanding of the product development process, and provide innovative improvements to current practice.
CIPD was established in 1996 as one of the NSF's Engineering Research Centers (ERC), and is an interdepartmental research program joining MIT's School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management. Since its inception, CIPD has executed nearly 200 research projects, and produced over 133 refereed journal articles, 90 conference papers, and received 21 awards for outstanding research. That research has led to the creation of 11 spinoff companies, with an estimated 135 employees. In addition, the center's PD21 program has produced new degree programs at three partner universities. In FY2002, CIPD's 18 faculty and 21 graduate students have pursued product development research with a budget of $1.5 million.
As noted in last year's report to the MIT president, NSF elected not to continue funding CIPD as an ERC beyond December 31, 2001. We have had two years to prepare for this change, and have successfully transitioned by completing the ancillary programs required of an ERC, and focusing our research on problems specific to our sponsors. Under the guidance of center director Chris Magee and assistant director Nils Nordal, CIPD continues to advance the theory and practice of product development with research programs exploring the complex systems aspects of product development.
Research Programs
With the conclusion of our obligations to the NSF, the center has evolved over the past two years away from the ERC model of research—with its numerous ancillary commitments and programs—to one of focused research on specific problems. Increasingly, we have applied our research efforts to projects of particular interest to individual sponsoring companies, projects that provide direct benefits in terms of the understanding of and solutions to current problems.
Many of these projects are related to the emerging field of engineering systems—the study of systems characterized by their especially large scale, great complexity, and high or varying rates of change. The bulk of our research projects during the past five years—especially those in our core initiatives—have provided a natural gateway toward this focus. Our core initiatives explore characteristics of the design, development, and management of complex systems, a concern of increasing importance to contemporary engineering. Our evolution in this direction was reflected most recently in the Engineering Systems Division (ESD) symposium held in May of 2002—CIPD director Chris Magee not only presented research, but also served on the Symposium Committee.
CIPD research is directed by our vision that product development will be dispersed, global, and driven by new information and communication technologies. CIPD's four core research initiatives are:
- Distributed Object Modeling Environment (DOME)—Professor David Wallace, lead
- Information Flow Modeling (IFM)—Dr. Daniel Whitney, lead
- Virtual Customer (VC)—Professor John Hauser, lead
- Platform Architecture (PA)—Professor Olivier L. De Weck, lead
Distributed Object Modeling Environment
DOME represents a fundamentally new approach to integrated modeling and simulation. Our first test bed, DOME can integrate the development efforts of many product designers working on radically different platforms in widely dispersed locations. In a user-friendly web-based environment, DOME allows all designers to participate simultaneously in the modeling process.
Numerous firms have mounted system integration efforts using both commercial and proprietary techniques. These efforts have achieved limited success because of the difficulty in creating an explicit model for a very large system—many suppliers, a rapidly changing product, and an evolving organization.
DOME, however, exploits advances in information technology to create an architecture that addresses those barriers. DOME's single environment can integrate both data and services—that is, both product models and simulations—to accurately predict and model the integrated characteristics of large, complex, rapidly-evolving products. While maintaining information integrity, DOME provides the management controls of a centralized system while providing the responsiveness of a locally autonomous system.
The goal of the DOME project is to create a global community—or marketplace—of individuals that offering access to simulation services related to their own specialties. Much as the worldwide web enables global access to static information, DOME seeks to provide global access to simulation services through a World-Wide Simulation Web (WWSW). In 2001–2002, the DOME project has focused on developing a Mosaic-level application to enable widespread, grassroots use of the WWSW. (Mosaic was the university-developed application that allowed non-expert use of the WWW and eventually lead to the formation of Netscape Communications.) Our effort has involved the design of a new and representation software architecture based upon the experience gained through previous pilot studies, the development of an open, cross-platform software application, and the design and implementation of appropriate user interfaces and documentation. DOME's third-generation implementation is now approaching readiness for initial deployment.
The focus of the DOME project in 2002–2003 will be to bring the WWSW technology to grassroots innovators, academics, and entrepreneurs. Additionally, we will concentrate on pilot applications with the Ford Motor Company and with researchers at the University of Tokyo. Lastly, we will conduct research into new mechanisms for searching for desired simulation behaviors on the WWSW. For more on the DOME project, visit the CADlab web site at http://cadlab.mit.edu/.
Information Flow Modeling
CIPD is developing advanced methods for the management of knowledge used in the engineering design process. These methods are based on the techniques of information flow modeling through the application of design structure matrices (DSMs). The resulting visual representations of development activities serve as maps for understanding and improving the PD process.
IFM research helps engineers and managers to achieve greater value in the development cycle of complex products. Over the coming year we will complete the development of decision support tools that will allow product developers to reduce risks in the PD process and optimize product performance (with specific application to jet engine design). This work has special significance to the DOME initiative, which began collaboration in the fall of 2000. Thesis work in this area began in the spring of 2002.
IFM research on spiral development aims to determine which conditions warrant the use of spiral product development processes rather than stage-gate processes. We laid the groundwork for our investigation during the past year by rigorously defining the spiral and stage-gate processes. In the summer of 2001 we began applying mathematical models to spiral processes at Verizon, and completed that work in the fall. Also in the summer of 2001, we completed a case study on spiral applications in the computer hardware industry for ITT Industries. Additionally, we completed case studies of Ford, Pratt & Whitney, IDE, and Xerox. By the spring of 2002, we began to determine the selection criteria necessary to effectively choose between spiral and stage-gate product development processes.
IFM research on system level knowledge strives to increase our understanding about the capture and management of design knowledge in complex products. Using DSM, we map out the exchange of knowledge during a project's early development. Our aim is to better convert top level specifications into component specifications, and to ensure that components in complex systems work harmoniously. Collaborations between Ford, Pratt & Whitney, Otis Elevator, and Veeco-CVC have proven the value of our novel uses of DSM. In the summer of 2001 we conducted a case study at Johnson and Johnson, and concluded analysis in the fall. Deliverables included a paper presented the ASME 13th International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology in September.
Virtual Customer
The phenomenal advances of the internet in recent years now allow marketing research to be fully integrated into the PD process. Our virtual customer projects are designed to make both the customer and the PD teams full participants in a dynamic exchange of information that benefits both. The projects pursue a radically reduced lag time between customer input and PD response, and at a fraction of current cost.
Demonstrations and working papers are available at the Virtual Customer web site at http://mitsloan.mit.edu/vc/. This site is a major practical output of the project, and includes demos of various VC methods. It is also posts open-source code that will allow researchers and practitioners to download software applicable to market research. This past year, we made significant progress on our five virtual customer methods—user design, securities trading of concepts, information pump, fast polyhedral adaptive conjoint analysis, and reinforcement learning, as highlighted below.
User Design (UD)—Developing and Testing an Interface for Product Development
This project aims to gather better data faster by directly engaging customers in the design process. We have developed a full suite of UD methods, testing applications for products such as crossover vehicles, ski resorts, telemetrics, laptop computers, and laptop computer bags. The computer bags experiment suggests that UD is both internally and externally valid as a predictor of customer behavior; in the coming year, we will complete analysis of the study to verify it.
In addition, we are developing software engines that allow product development teams to rapidly create UD web sites. These engines will enable the teams to rapidly gather feedback on customer questions. We tested pseudo-engines using eight student projects. (NFO Interactive donated access to their panel for the test.) Over the coming months, we will provide open source code to encourage a panel company, market research company, or sponsor to further refine these engines. Our ultimate goal is to deploy an engine that will allow design teams to quickly and inexpensively create their own customer questionnaires.
Securities Trading of Concepts (STOC)—Using Web Markets to Evaluate Product Concepts
STOC offers a creative approach to product concept evaluation that uses financial market methods. A small panel of respondents plays a game trading "securities," each of which represents a product concept. A highly valued security is equivalent to a desirable concept, and therefore, marketplace success.
As reported in last year's annual report, we completed a pilot test of this web market methodology using portable bicycle pumps as the product category. In 2001 we extended the STOC concept to laptop computer bags and cross-over vehicles (one part SUV, one part minivan, one part car). We anticipate working with one of our industry sponsors (discussions are underway with Ford) to test STOC markets on actual product concepts, and to compare results to those of current forecasting methods.
Information Pump—Getting a Better Voice of the Customer
Methods that elicit qualitative information from consumers presume a good faith effort on the part of the customer. However, consumers do not always fulfill that expectation, so the Information Pump (IP) provides incentives. This project seeks to develop a discussion protocol that provides, for the first time, a set of clear incentives for revealing all relevant information about a target product.
In 2001 we refined and tested several web-based variants of the IP. We can now run multiple discussion sessions from a single server, which can accommodate up to seven participants. We also developed an individual respondent control procedure, which determines information quality. In 2002 we are extending the IP in three different directions. First, we will develop an asynchronous version that will enable PD teams to use the IP to passively and continuously collect voice of the customer information over the web. Second, we will provide a solution to the theoretical problem of creating incentives for closed-ended evaluations supplied by a client. Third, we will explore ways of adapting the IP to idea generation.
Fast Polyhedral Adaptive Conjoint Estimation (FastPace)—Reducing the Questioning Burden with Advanced Polyhedral Methods
Normal conjoint methods are too long for web-based applications. (Respondents "wear out" sooner on the web.) However, marketing research shows that adaptive conjoint methods can be effectively applied. In 2001, the Virtual Customer initiative continued to work with leading firms that use adaptive conjoint analysis (ACA), and to refine their methods with new interior-point algorithms drawn from mathematical programming.
In the latter part of 2001, we undertook a large-scale experiment to test the external validity of FastPace, as compared with ACA and traditional non-adaptive methods (this test was one of the first controlled external validity tests for any of the methods, even given the thirty-year popularity of conjoint analysis). FastPace demonstrated greater internal and external validity, and provided superior predictions.
More importantly, as we discovered during the experiment, hybrid methods could perform even better. Using a version of the FastPace code coupled with new theory, we developed a hybrid adaptive method that provides estimates for individual respondents. In 2002 we will develop and test the algorithm with simulation and empirical studies. A key aspect to this development will be an error theory.
Reinforcement Learning
All the methods we have explored to date—web-based conjoint analysis, FastPace, User Design—seek to collect information at the level of the individual customer. This past year we identified the process of reinforcement learning for developing super-adaptive methods, which would handle much larger numbers of customers and product features. In the super-adaptive scenario, product designs would evolve automatically as more customers completed survey tasks about those designs.
In the latter half of 2001 we began applying algorithms to data supplied by a collaborating firm (a catalogue company). Our goal since then has been to find a means to select products, prices, and promotions automatically to maximize profit. Once we understand the algorithms and their capabilities, we plan to apply them to develop the super-adaptive methods. Working papers will follow.
Platform Architecture
As noted in last year's Report to the President, our PA initiative was successfully completed in May of 2001. The initiative was revived, however, in the summer of 2002 under the leadership of Professor Olivier de Weck. In keeping with CIPD's goal of increasingly focused research for center sponsors, this initiative is helping General Motors to develop comprehensive and dependable system architecture principles for vehicle family design.
Motor vehicle companies worldwide are seeking to optimize the numbers and types of vehicle platforms; the goal is to reduce production costs and development time while maintaining diversity of product variants. Increasingly heterogeneous customer demands have driven the trend towards a fragmentation of the world automotive market for cars and trucks with smaller per vehicle sales volumes. Success in this competitive environment requires the research and application of sound system architecture principles in vehicle family design. General Motors in particular—the world's largest automobile company, with sales in 2002 of 8.5 million vehicles and 12 different brands—faces a daunting challenge due to its diverse product family.
CIPD is increasingly interested in the PD aspects of engineering systems, and this project is assisting General Motors to develop a methodology for platform system architecture of its vehicle families. Begun in June 2002, this project will, over the next year, establish a baseline of current vehicle platform architecture practices at GM, determine the constraints used for system architecture optimization, then begin preliminary vehicle platform architecting with application to a specific GM vehicle family.
Other Research Highlights
New Initiative: Tools for Risk Management in Product Testing
An important problem in product development is the formulation of a best value testing strategy—a key measure for reducing product development costs and time to market. To evaluate new design concepts and determine the performance of products under development, industry carries out numerous tests and simulations. However, real-world testing is always less than perfect, and can never fully resolve the uncertainties related to a given design. We must therefore analyze the tradeoffs between the various tests to determine a testing plan that maximizes confidence level while minimizing the testing cost and cycle time. In other words, we need to determine a best value testing strategy.
This project seeks to evaluate and apply a probabilistic method proposed by MIT Professors Earll Murman and John Deyst. It treats testing as an activity that generates useful information about design parameters, and reduces the uncertainty of satisfying product performance requirements (i.e., risk). By quantifying the risk reduction of testing activities, and counting testing cost/time, we will identify and implement the most cost-effective investment strategy to balance risk management with resource investment in testing.
The project will focus on the testing of a hood system for the Ford Motor Company. Initiated in the spring of 2002 with the collection of modeling data, the project will apply a model to test cases during the summer, report interim results, then complete the project and deliverables during AY2003.
Completion of Initiatives
In May 2002, CIPD successfully completed the following three research initiatives:
- Incentives and Boundaries
- Implementation Dynamics
- Product Development Integration Laboratory
With the conclusion of their research and theses, and their subsequent graduation from MIT, the graduate students in these initiatives assumed positions in industry and academia.
Education Programs
CIPD is an interdisciplinary program between the School of Engineering and the School of Management. We believe that students' course experiences should address the interplay between the technical, social, and system elements of product development, and prepare them for work in a globally distributed services marketplace. In the period from From July 1, 2001 to June 30, 2002 CIPD funded nine masters students and 13 PhD students. In June 2002, MIT awarded six masters degrees and PhD degrees to students funded by the center.
As noted in last year's Report to the President, NSF elected not to extend funding to CIPD beyond December 2001. In preparation for that change, we have been transitioning into a more independent research center for the past two years. We carefully evaluated our strategy and programs, and decided to maximize our efforts in research to better serve our industry sponsors. Therefore we have concluded ancillary education programs that, valuable in themselves, drew resources away from our primary research focus.
Our PD education programs currently target three communities: working professionals, graduate students, and undergraduates, as outlined below.
Programs For Working Professionals
SDM Product Development Track
The SDM Product Development Track was created in collaboration with MIT's System Design and Management (SDM) program. This two-year degree program targets mid-career engineering professionals who are potential leaders in product development. Students in the program continue to work for their employers at least half time while pursuing their degree through an innovative educational structure—courses are broadcast directly to the students' company sites. Several times per year, students visit MIT to participate in special PD course modules, and for one semester in their program, students study on campus. At the course's completion, students receive an MIT degree in engineering and management.
To date, 40 MIT faculty have participated in the SDM track. Approximately 270 students from 55 organizations have enrolled, and nearly 200 have graduated. In 2002, those organizations included Boeing, Ford, Kodak, NASA, Raytheon, and UTC among many others. SDM plans to keep its cohort at approximately 30–40 students per year using the current format.
SDM is renovating two of its core courses: CIPD director Chris Magee has joined the teaching roster of ESD.33J Systems Engineering; Professor Steven Eppinger of the center's IFM initiative has joined the roster of ESD.185J System and Project Management.
Additionally, Professor Eppinger assumed responsibility as Sloan codirector of LFM-SDM in July 2001. With closer ties to these two programs, CIPD has explored arrangements whereby LFM-SDM partner companies would sponsor CIPD doctoral students in conjunction with their LFM-SDM Master's degree internships.
PD21 (Education Consortium for Product Development Leadership in the 21st Century)
CIPD began disseminating the SDM product development curriculum in 1998. Collaborating with the University of Detroit Mercy, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Naval Postgraduate School, we implemented the program called PD21, the Education Consortium for Product Development Leadership in the 21stCentury. Guided by our industrial sponsors Xerox, Ford, and the US Navy, the schools copy MIT's core PD curriculum from SDM, but emphasize project and case study work relevant in their geographic areas (optics in Rochester, automobiles in Detroit, naval systems in Monterey).
Establishing the consortium as a multi-institutional platform for PD education has been a clear success. To date, over 450 students have enrolled in the program at the three schools, and over 200 have graduated. With the PD21 program firmly established, CIPD completed its obligations with regards to the NSF grant that initiated it. The center submitted its PD21 final report to the NSF in November of 2001, and it was approved in December.
Executive Education Courses
CIPD faculty created and are teaching a full suite of short courses as non-degree programs. These industrial mini-courses (generally a dozen annually) have been offered throughout the year through MIT's office of summer professional programs and through Sloan's office of special executive programs. Well over 300 students have attended during the past academic year. In addition, SDM faculty have offered over a dozen courses by distance learning through the SDM Product Development Track.
Systems Engineering Course
In June 2002, CIPD's director Chris Magee began coteaching the course ESD.33J Systems Engineering. With 42 graduate students enrolled (most in the SDM Product Development Track), the course examines the sources of complexity that can adversely affect new product design and development, and establishes a systems engineering process that can be tailored to mitigate the effects of complexity. Subject materials and exercises are complemented by special event seminars prepared by industry and government speakers. Most recently, the class was visited by the chief of engineering at United Technologies, who discussed the design process of fuel cells.
Programs For Graduate and Undergraduate Students
Graduate Course
 The Xcart, an environmentally friendly "shopping scooter," has an attached collapsible basket that can be used to transport groceries. Students from MIT United Technology Corporation, and Rhode Island School of Design worked in ESD.32J to create new product prototypes, such as the Xcart. |
Professor Steve Eppinger of the IFM initiative teaches a semester-long class, 15.783J (or 2.739J, or ESD.32J) Product Design and Development. The class focuses on integration of the marketing, design, and manufacturing functions of the firm in creating new products. Student teams develop new product concepts and create prototypes. An associated web site (its construction was supported by CIPD) provides an extensive set of resources for students and support materials for faculty teaching comparable courses at other institutions. The site is organized around the book Product Design and Development as taught at MIT, and can be found at http://www.ulrich-eppinger.net/.
MBA Course
CIPD collaborated on the design of a semester-long MBA course based on an integrated theory of the firm. 15.903 Strategy and Organization incorporates the latest (often CIPD-funded) research while analyzing insights from organizational theory and economics. The course was taught for the first time in the fall of 2000, and in AY2002 drew approximately 250 students.
Freshman Course
2.009 The Product Engineering Process teaches undergraduates how to develop an understanding of product development phases by working in teams to design and construct high quality product prototypes. Taught by CIPD initiative leader David Wallace, the class develops students' ability to reason about design alternatives, and apply modeling techniques appropriate for different development phases.
Noon Seminars
In AY2002, CIPD hosted over 20 lunchtime seminars. These informal talks included presentations by researchers at CIPD and throughout the Institute, and also by professors from the Harvard Business School and product developers from industry.
Outreach Programs
The center's outreach activities aim to provide lifelong learning experiences for business professionals.
Third International Design Structure Matrix Workshop
In October 2001, CIPD cosponsored this workshop on DSM along with the Lean Aero-space Initiative, Leaders for Manufacturing, and Ford Motor Company. Over 25 speakers presented research at this highly interactive gathering, which was attended by 60 participants from industry, government, and academia. The fourth international DSM workshop will be held in October 2002.
Business Edge Teleconference
In April 2002, CIPD hosted a satellite downlink teleconference on Business and Design. Approximately 150 participants from a dozen institutions took part in the program, which featured video case studies on successful design in business. Included were interviews with CEO's, senior executives, and designers, who provided insights into corporate design practice at Acela, Humanscale, IBM, OXO International, and SEI Investments. Broadcast from MIT, the program's panel of experts included Professor Stephen Eppinger of CIPD's Information Flow Modeling initiative.
Visiting Scholars
In the past year, CIPD hosted four visiting scholars and research scientists from the Helsinki University of Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, and the University of Pretoria
sponsorship.
At the end of 2001, NSF concluded it's five-year agreement to fund the center as an ERC. Since then, CIPD's eight industrial sponsors (Ford, General Motors, IBM, IDe, ITT Industries, Product Genesis, US Navy, Xerox Corporation) have continued to honor their commitments to the center. In turn, the center has provided research that has focused increasingly on problems of special interest to our sponsors.
CIPD is actively seeking new partnerships. While funded by the NSF, our industrial partners were limited to companies within the United States, and we have since then hosted visits by well known international firms. In 2001–2002 we met with companies that included Goodyear, PTC, and Sandia. Our goal for the coming years is to recruit partners in industry sectors that complement our existing membership. Our current partners operate mainly in the industrial, capital goods, technology hardware and equipment sectors, and we will target the aerospace, software, and information technology sectors. We have also continued to meet with representatives from the National Science Foundation to discuss programs through which the center could again partner with the NSF.
Other Recent and Upcoming Events
- July 2001. Sloan Executive Program: managing complex product development projects
- August 2001. Naval-Industry R&D partnership conference
- September 2001. Sloan Executive Education: developing and managing a successful technology and product strategy
- October 2001. DOME working group meeting
- October 2001. ITT Industries annual Taguchi Methods Symposium—This conference explores the role of Robust Engineering in product design through a series of tutorials and case studies.
- October 2001. Third international Design Structure Matrix workshop
- November 2001. CIPD fall research review
- November 2001. Sloan Executive Education: managing complex product development projects
- December 2001. Sloan Executive Education: developing and managing a successful technology and product strategy
- April 2002. The Business Edge: satellite down-link teleconference
- May 2002. Engineering Systems Division internal symposium
- May 2002. Sloan Executive Education: developing and managing a successful technology and product strategy
- July 2002. Sloan Executive Education: Managing Complex Product Development Projects.
- August 2002. Naval-Industry R&D Partnership Conference. CIPD will attend the conference and participate in the "First Responders Robotics Business War Game."
- October 2002. Fourth international Design Structure Matrix workshop.
- October 2002. MIT Series on Technology and the Corporation—CIPD will present the results of its research in a two-day program entitled "Innovations in Product Development: Bringing Successful Products to Market."
- November 2002. Sloan Executive Education: managing complex product development projects
Personnel Changes
In January 2002, Chris Magee assumed directorship of CIPD. Professor Magee joined the center after serving as executive director of the Ford/MIT Alliance. His extensive background in product development is the result of many years in R&D for the Ford Motor Company. His strong ties to industrial product development will enhance CIPD's role as a predominantly research-based center.
On December 31, 2002, Professors Maurice Holmes and Steven D. Eppinger stepped down as CIPD's codirectors.
Professor Holmes retired from MIT to become president of the Business Process Solutions Group in Rochester NY.
Professor Eppinger will continue his CIPD-related teaching and research duties, as well as his duties as codirector of the LFM/SDM program. Professor Eppinger's assistant Cara Barber transferred from CIPD to join Professor Eppinger at LFM/SDM.
Nils Nordal continues to serve as assistant director, with Michael Mack as communications coordinator. Kathleen Sullivan continues as the center's office manager, and has assumed additional responsibilities as manager of finance. Kathleen Wang, after many years with CIPD, left her position as industrial liaison to spend more time with her family.
More information about the Center for Innovation in Product Development can be found on the web at http://web.mit.edu/cipd/.