Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per resp... more Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number.
2012 IEEE International Systems Conference SysCon 2012, 2012
With much of the current systems engineering workforce reaching retirement age, there is a critic... more With much of the current systems engineering workforce reaching retirement age, there is a critical need to develop work experience among new systems engineers. Increasingly, educators and employers are turning to educational technology-based approaches to aid in this process. One such effort is the Experience Accelerator, an on-going research project aimed at maturing program-level systems engineers in Department of Defense acquisition programs. In this experiential learning approach, learners assume the role of a lead program systems engineer for development of a new unmanned aerial system (UAS), and they must make appropriate decisions and trade-offs at key points during the development lifecycle to keep the program on track and recover from problems that occur. Problems can occur in such areas as requirements, schedule, quality, cost, and customer expectations.
We will present a progress report on our effort to develop a science-based design methodology for... more We will present a progress report on our effort to develop a science-based design methodology for warehousing systems. In particular, we will discuss the hierarchical structure of our design procedure. This includes the decisions and parameters used in the master model, the various sub-models, and the decision and data interaction between the various levels in the hierarchy. We will present several sub-models that are specific for a particular function or material handling equipment. Computational results of the application of the sub-model for modular storage drawers will also be shared.
Abstract: Traditional Systems Engineering (SE) education is not adequate to meet the emerging cha... more Abstract: Traditional Systems Engineering (SE) education is not adequate to meet the emerging challenges posed by ever increasing Systems and Societal demands, the workforce called upon to meet them and the timeframe in which these challenges need to ...
Systems engineering educators are struggling to meet the workforce development demand for senior ... more Systems engineering educators are struggling to meet the workforce development demand for senior systems engineers. The workforce challenge is to shorten the time it takes for a systems engineer to reach the senior level. The Systems Engineering Experience Accelerator research project was conceived as a critical response to these needs and challenges. The purpose of this paper is to provide a description of the Experience Accelerator architecture which will provide the foundation for post prototype development. While the prototype is only intended as a research vehicle for conceptual design and evaluation, this architectural description should address the foreseen issues for a deployable future version of the system.
ABSTRACT Increasingly, there is concern about the problem and potential consequences of counterfe... more ABSTRACT Increasingly, there is concern about the problem and potential consequences of counterfeit parts in the defense supply chain and defense systems. Counterfeit parts have different performance and failure characteristics than genuine parts and can result in degraded system availability, reliability and performance in the field, not to mention critical safety issues. Thus, there is an imperative to understand counterfeiting and potential ways to prevent or contain it. Today’s systems are composed of multitudes of constituents – major sub-systems, which in turn consist of sub-systems, which consist of components, and so on. Likewise, the supply chain consists of multiple tiers of suppliers who provide the constituents. This is a complex environment in which to address the counterfeit parts problem. In addition, counterfeiters can potentially adapt to and overcome anti-counterfeiting measures, and non-counterfeiting actors may adapt to such measures in unanticipated ways, causing secondary effects. This paper presents an enterprise modeling framework for studying the problem. This framework consists of five interacting elements – the exogenous environment, policy, enterprise actors, supply chain flows, and system/constituent behavior and performance. A prototype agent-based simulation model implementing this framework is also presented. The goal is to use such models to determine effective anti-counterfeiting policies.
Acquisition programs are under pressure to deliver increasingly complex capability to the field w... more Acquisition programs are under pressure to deliver increasingly complex capability to the field without the cost growth associated with recent programs. Evolutionary acquisition was adopted to help reduce system cost (through the use of mature technologies) and to improve system performance (through faster deployment of incremental capability). While the ultimate verdict is not yet in on this decision, our previous simulation-based results have demonstrated that evolutionary acquisition can deliver improved capability more quickly than traditional acquisition, but that cost may actually increase over that of traditional acquisition. This is due to the overhead resulting from more frequent system deployment and update cycles. Are there other factors that can help reduce the cost of evolutionary acquisition? This paper investigates the role of system modularity and production level in the cost of evolutionary acquisition. Modularity typically imposes upfront costs in design and develo...
Programs that develop and deploy complex systems typically have multiple criteria by which they a... more Programs that develop and deploy complex systems typically have multiple criteria by which they are judged to be successful. Categories of such criteria include schedule, cost, technical system performance, quality and customer expectations. Criteria are operationalized via particular metrics, and often there are complex relationships between metrics, e.g., correlations or trade-offs. In an acquisition program, it is critical that systems engineers understand the implications of their actions and decisions with respect to these metrics, since the metrics are used to report the performance and eventual outcome of the program. However, such understanding usually takes many years of on-the-job experience. This paper describes an approach to simulation modeling of program behavior and performance whereby program outputs expressed in these metrics can be studied by systems engineers. An example program simulation model is presented that currently is used in an educational technology syst...
ABSTRACT Systems engineering increasingly addresses the system lifecycle, as opposed to its more ... more ABSTRACT Systems engineering increasingly addresses the system lifecycle, as opposed to its more traditional role focusing on design and development. This new situation results in part from the recognition that upstream design and deployment decisions have potentially significant cost and performance implications post-deployment. For military systems, the role that typically addresses post-deployment issues is the logistician. Over the system lifecycle, it is important that the traditional roles of systems engineer and logistician understand issues faced by one another, as well as joint cost and performance implications. This paper presents the design of a role-based experiential learning environment for logisticians involved in military sustainment. This design leverages the generic components of an existing single-learner technology base, the Experience Accelerator, for presenting and controlling the learner experience, plus simulating program outcomes resulting from learner decisions. This technology base has been used to create a learning experience for a lead systems engineer in charge of designing and developing a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system. In this new environment, the logistician learner interacts with systems engineers during UAV system acquisition and sustainment, learns about systems engineering issues and their effect on logistics, tries to influence upstream systems engineering decisions, and also performs logistics functions.
The exploration of an emerging academic discipline to develop new skills for a service-led econom... more The exploration of an emerging academic discipline to develop new skills for a service-led economy has recently made tremendous progress in the areas related to technology services. This paper examines the technical and economical factors that affect the knowledge-based services provided in support of server electrical design and packaging. The service group basically provides system level electrical design and integration support in the form of electrical and physical design rules, engineering consultation and system level electrical verification of server designs. This paper also describes a business transformation methodology and model based on scientific and stochastic processes to transform the support group into a high value-added service provider.
As the front-end to product and system lifecycles, research and development activities serve as e... more As the front-end to product and system lifecycles, research and development activities serve as engines of value creation. By nature, though, R&D involves significant uncertainty. As such, it often is viewed as an investment problem, whereby funds are invested in ventures under risk, with the hope of achieving future value. This paper investigates the use of organizational simulation to analyze the R&D investment problem, focusing on ways to increase value created from R&D. Based on a process-focused model of R&D systems, initial results indicate that using a real options framework to valuate R&D outperforms traditional discounted cash flow (DCF) methods in total value created, but that DCF methods are preferred for return on R&D investment. To complement the process-focused R&D system model, a product-focused model of R&D is specified and integrated with the process-focused model.
Recent advances in internet technology have created opportunities to improve the stateof-the-art ... more Recent advances in internet technology have created opportunities to improve the stateof-the-art with respect to the computational tools available for design and analysis of facilities and material handling systems. For example, the internet facilitates remote experimentation and analysis of alternative designs. In addition, web-based client-server applications can support collaborative design and promote better management of model data. In this paper, we describe on-going research at Georgia Tech that leverages internet technology to create computational tools for facility and material handling system design. First, we describe a web-based simulation environment to support modeling and design of manufacturing and material handling systems. The environment is designed to facilitate structured analysis and experimentation of material handling systems. The second is an interactive, web-based application for warehouse design. It integrates a design database and heuristics to allow the user to make several design decisions involving configuration of storage areas in a warehouse, focusing on the forward pick area. This paper focuses on three important modeling issues that are exemplified in the applications presented. These include model representation to support tool integration, model representation to support reconfigurability, and design of databases to ensure data consistency. We conclude with a discussion of future modeling research.
How good is your warehouse performance? Do you have a lot of room for improvement, or are you ver... more How good is your warehouse performance? Do you have a lot of room for improvement, or are you very close to "best in class?" Until now, these questions have been impossible to answer without expensive benchmarking studies, because traditional performance metrics simply don't contain enough information to support comparisons over time or across sites.
Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per resp... more Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number.
2012 IEEE International Systems Conference SysCon 2012, 2012
With much of the current systems engineering workforce reaching retirement age, there is a critic... more With much of the current systems engineering workforce reaching retirement age, there is a critical need to develop work experience among new systems engineers. Increasingly, educators and employers are turning to educational technology-based approaches to aid in this process. One such effort is the Experience Accelerator, an on-going research project aimed at maturing program-level systems engineers in Department of Defense acquisition programs. In this experiential learning approach, learners assume the role of a lead program systems engineer for development of a new unmanned aerial system (UAS), and they must make appropriate decisions and trade-offs at key points during the development lifecycle to keep the program on track and recover from problems that occur. Problems can occur in such areas as requirements, schedule, quality, cost, and customer expectations.
We will present a progress report on our effort to develop a science-based design methodology for... more We will present a progress report on our effort to develop a science-based design methodology for warehousing systems. In particular, we will discuss the hierarchical structure of our design procedure. This includes the decisions and parameters used in the master model, the various sub-models, and the decision and data interaction between the various levels in the hierarchy. We will present several sub-models that are specific for a particular function or material handling equipment. Computational results of the application of the sub-model for modular storage drawers will also be shared.
Abstract: Traditional Systems Engineering (SE) education is not adequate to meet the emerging cha... more Abstract: Traditional Systems Engineering (SE) education is not adequate to meet the emerging challenges posed by ever increasing Systems and Societal demands, the workforce called upon to meet them and the timeframe in which these challenges need to ...
Systems engineering educators are struggling to meet the workforce development demand for senior ... more Systems engineering educators are struggling to meet the workforce development demand for senior systems engineers. The workforce challenge is to shorten the time it takes for a systems engineer to reach the senior level. The Systems Engineering Experience Accelerator research project was conceived as a critical response to these needs and challenges. The purpose of this paper is to provide a description of the Experience Accelerator architecture which will provide the foundation for post prototype development. While the prototype is only intended as a research vehicle for conceptual design and evaluation, this architectural description should address the foreseen issues for a deployable future version of the system.
ABSTRACT Increasingly, there is concern about the problem and potential consequences of counterfe... more ABSTRACT Increasingly, there is concern about the problem and potential consequences of counterfeit parts in the defense supply chain and defense systems. Counterfeit parts have different performance and failure characteristics than genuine parts and can result in degraded system availability, reliability and performance in the field, not to mention critical safety issues. Thus, there is an imperative to understand counterfeiting and potential ways to prevent or contain it. Today’s systems are composed of multitudes of constituents – major sub-systems, which in turn consist of sub-systems, which consist of components, and so on. Likewise, the supply chain consists of multiple tiers of suppliers who provide the constituents. This is a complex environment in which to address the counterfeit parts problem. In addition, counterfeiters can potentially adapt to and overcome anti-counterfeiting measures, and non-counterfeiting actors may adapt to such measures in unanticipated ways, causing secondary effects. This paper presents an enterprise modeling framework for studying the problem. This framework consists of five interacting elements – the exogenous environment, policy, enterprise actors, supply chain flows, and system/constituent behavior and performance. A prototype agent-based simulation model implementing this framework is also presented. The goal is to use such models to determine effective anti-counterfeiting policies.
Acquisition programs are under pressure to deliver increasingly complex capability to the field w... more Acquisition programs are under pressure to deliver increasingly complex capability to the field without the cost growth associated with recent programs. Evolutionary acquisition was adopted to help reduce system cost (through the use of mature technologies) and to improve system performance (through faster deployment of incremental capability). While the ultimate verdict is not yet in on this decision, our previous simulation-based results have demonstrated that evolutionary acquisition can deliver improved capability more quickly than traditional acquisition, but that cost may actually increase over that of traditional acquisition. This is due to the overhead resulting from more frequent system deployment and update cycles. Are there other factors that can help reduce the cost of evolutionary acquisition? This paper investigates the role of system modularity and production level in the cost of evolutionary acquisition. Modularity typically imposes upfront costs in design and develo...
Programs that develop and deploy complex systems typically have multiple criteria by which they a... more Programs that develop and deploy complex systems typically have multiple criteria by which they are judged to be successful. Categories of such criteria include schedule, cost, technical system performance, quality and customer expectations. Criteria are operationalized via particular metrics, and often there are complex relationships between metrics, e.g., correlations or trade-offs. In an acquisition program, it is critical that systems engineers understand the implications of their actions and decisions with respect to these metrics, since the metrics are used to report the performance and eventual outcome of the program. However, such understanding usually takes many years of on-the-job experience. This paper describes an approach to simulation modeling of program behavior and performance whereby program outputs expressed in these metrics can be studied by systems engineers. An example program simulation model is presented that currently is used in an educational technology syst...
ABSTRACT Systems engineering increasingly addresses the system lifecycle, as opposed to its more ... more ABSTRACT Systems engineering increasingly addresses the system lifecycle, as opposed to its more traditional role focusing on design and development. This new situation results in part from the recognition that upstream design and deployment decisions have potentially significant cost and performance implications post-deployment. For military systems, the role that typically addresses post-deployment issues is the logistician. Over the system lifecycle, it is important that the traditional roles of systems engineer and logistician understand issues faced by one another, as well as joint cost and performance implications. This paper presents the design of a role-based experiential learning environment for logisticians involved in military sustainment. This design leverages the generic components of an existing single-learner technology base, the Experience Accelerator, for presenting and controlling the learner experience, plus simulating program outcomes resulting from learner decisions. This technology base has been used to create a learning experience for a lead systems engineer in charge of designing and developing a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system. In this new environment, the logistician learner interacts with systems engineers during UAV system acquisition and sustainment, learns about systems engineering issues and their effect on logistics, tries to influence upstream systems engineering decisions, and also performs logistics functions.
The exploration of an emerging academic discipline to develop new skills for a service-led econom... more The exploration of an emerging academic discipline to develop new skills for a service-led economy has recently made tremendous progress in the areas related to technology services. This paper examines the technical and economical factors that affect the knowledge-based services provided in support of server electrical design and packaging. The service group basically provides system level electrical design and integration support in the form of electrical and physical design rules, engineering consultation and system level electrical verification of server designs. This paper also describes a business transformation methodology and model based on scientific and stochastic processes to transform the support group into a high value-added service provider.
As the front-end to product and system lifecycles, research and development activities serve as e... more As the front-end to product and system lifecycles, research and development activities serve as engines of value creation. By nature, though, R&D involves significant uncertainty. As such, it often is viewed as an investment problem, whereby funds are invested in ventures under risk, with the hope of achieving future value. This paper investigates the use of organizational simulation to analyze the R&D investment problem, focusing on ways to increase value created from R&D. Based on a process-focused model of R&D systems, initial results indicate that using a real options framework to valuate R&D outperforms traditional discounted cash flow (DCF) methods in total value created, but that DCF methods are preferred for return on R&D investment. To complement the process-focused R&D system model, a product-focused model of R&D is specified and integrated with the process-focused model.
Recent advances in internet technology have created opportunities to improve the stateof-the-art ... more Recent advances in internet technology have created opportunities to improve the stateof-the-art with respect to the computational tools available for design and analysis of facilities and material handling systems. For example, the internet facilitates remote experimentation and analysis of alternative designs. In addition, web-based client-server applications can support collaborative design and promote better management of model data. In this paper, we describe on-going research at Georgia Tech that leverages internet technology to create computational tools for facility and material handling system design. First, we describe a web-based simulation environment to support modeling and design of manufacturing and material handling systems. The environment is designed to facilitate structured analysis and experimentation of material handling systems. The second is an interactive, web-based application for warehouse design. It integrates a design database and heuristics to allow the user to make several design decisions involving configuration of storage areas in a warehouse, focusing on the forward pick area. This paper focuses on three important modeling issues that are exemplified in the applications presented. These include model representation to support tool integration, model representation to support reconfigurability, and design of databases to ensure data consistency. We conclude with a discussion of future modeling research.
How good is your warehouse performance? Do you have a lot of room for improvement, or are you ver... more How good is your warehouse performance? Do you have a lot of room for improvement, or are you very close to "best in class?" Until now, these questions have been impossible to answer without expensive benchmarking studies, because traditional performance metrics simply don't contain enough information to support comparisons over time or across sites.
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Papers by Douglas Bodner