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 ...
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.
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 ...
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.
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Papers by Douglas Bodner