Download SAE 599 CASE STUDIES IN SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

SAE 543 CASE STUDIES IN SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
AND MANAGEMENT (3 units)
Fall semester, 2013
Syllabus
usc.syllabusSAE543revfa2013
Lecture and seminar coverage of major program case studies in the DoD, NASA,
and commercial arenas, employing new methodologies to cover the fundamental
positive and negative learning principles of systems engineering. Program
management and software cases will also be studied where they intersect with
systems engineering.
Section 32313; off campus; simultaneous with:
Section 32343: on campus; Mondays, 3:30pm – 6:10pm
Instructor: George Friedman
email: [email protected]
email : [email protected]
Phone: (818) 981-5297
Fax: (818) 981-1917
Office: GER 201
Hours: 1-3pm, Mondays, or by appointment
TA:
TBD
Text
H.W. Gehman, ed, Columbia Accident Investigation Report, vol 1, Apogee Books, 2003
(If this report is not available, it will be provided on the website)
Prerequisites: SAE 549
Course Objectives:
The domain of systems engineering is becoming increasingly complex and
multidimensional, yet presently systems engineering processes have been developed from
experience and evolutionary growth rather than as a result of derivations from first
principles. In order to form a basis of applicability and reality to the methods and
procedures of systems engineering taught in other courses, this course provides a series of
real-world case studies where these principles were applied well or poorly, and describes
the consequences – both positive and negative – of the manner that the principles were
applied. Based on these motivations, the Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) of the Systems
Architecture and Engineering (SAE) program recommended that such a course be created
and it was taught for the first time in the fall of 2005 as SAE 599. The areas covered
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will include the development and management of military, space and commercial
systems. The methodology of employing case studies themselves will also be addressed.
An additional objective will be to add to the “systems engineering case studies” body of
knowledge by including the experiences of the students in the class. In previous classes,
this lecturer has had the benefit of the shared experience of graduate students with an
aggregate of hundreds of person years experience.
Course Materials:
The course materials will be organized into: 7 major case studies (100+ pages each),
25 intermediate case studies (10+ pages each) and over 100 minor case studies
(~1 page each.)
Major Case Studies: (100+ pages each)
Columbia Accident Investigation Report (261 pages) Course Text,
covering the Columbia Shuttle disaster in the context of the earlier Challenger disaster
and the background of NASA engineering and management decision-making,
Six U.S. Air Force studies, developed by the Air Force Center for Systems Engineering
and the Air Force Institute of Technology which include: the C-5 military transport, the
F-111 multi-service fighter aircraft, F-117 stealth fighter aircraft, B-2 stealth bomber,
Hubble Space Telescope, International Space Station, and the Global Positioning System.
These case studies are available on the Air Force website: http://cse.afit.edu . The format
of all the Air Force case studies follow the Friedman-Sage matrix, published in Systems
Engineering, vol 7, no 1, the Journal of the International Council on Systems
Engineering.
These 7 major case studies are presented in substantial detail, addressing not only issues
of systems engineering but of its environment of detailed engineering and program
management. Major issues covered include government/contractor relations, trades,
decisions, reliability, cost, measures of effectiveness, competition, software, safety,
politics, management oversight, and the insertion of advanced technology.
Intermediate Case Studies: (~10 pages each)
These cases include studies on the Boeing 777, Apollo program, Central Arizona Project,
Manhattan Project, Polaris program, Hubble Space Telescope, Lockheed F-117 Stealth
Fighter,, McDonnell Douglas C-17 transport, Learjet Model 60 business jet, McDonnell
Douglas MD-11 commercial airliner, as well as automobile factories and electric
vehicles.
Another dozen intermediate case studies are available from: Tenner, Why things bite
back, Technology and the revenge of unintended consequences, 345 pp, Alfred Knopf,
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1996. These cases cover the areas of medicine, environmental disaster, office automation
and sports equipment and safety.
Minor Case Studies: (~1 page each)
Over 100 more sources are available from publications such as Systems Engineering, the
Journal of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), for example:
Friedman and Sage, Case Studies in Systems Acquisition, vol 7, no 1, and Bahill and
Henderson, Famous Failures, vol 8, no 1, as well as the personal experiences of the
instructor and prior graduate students.
Method of Instruction:
This course will be within USC’s Distance Education Network (DEN) system, and it is
anticipated that both on-campus and off-campus students will participate. All course
material will be available electronically and all lectures will be available on the DEN
website prior to each lecture and archived for reference later including the lectures.
The course method will be a combination of formal lectures by the instructor and a
seminar mode wherein students will read case studies, answer questions and provide
reports and commentary on the lectures and on the responses of other students. To the
extent that there are students in the classroom, the seminar will follow the traditional
format of discussion, questions and answers. However, in this lecturer’s experience,
most of the students are remote and most of those are not viewing the lecture in real time.
Therefore, a mode of “virtual seminars” will be the dominant method of instruction. In
this special mode, the lecturer will organize all student responses and abstract them to
present to the remainder of the class at a later lecture as well as providing his “higher
order commentary” on these student responses. Having had substantial experience with
the traditional mode of seminars, the lecturer feels that this “virtual seminar” mode has
advantages over the traditional mode in that more students’ voices can be heard by the
entire class and that longer and deeper instructor responses and feedback can be given to
each student.
Additionally, every student is invited to provide extra credit reports which are related to
any issue discussed or which fits in the general format of case studies.
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Course Grading:
There will no midterm examinations in this course. All grades will be determined by the
series of reports, assignments – and in some cases – the presentations provided by the
students.
A comprehensive report will be required in lieu of a final exam.
Grading weights:
Reports and answers to questions on case studies:
Commentary and comparison reports
Extra credit and personal case experiences
Course Schedule:
Week #
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
40%
40%
20%
Approximate Subjects
Course overview, available case studies, first dozen minor cases
Case study methodology; Second dozen minor cases;
Third dozen minor cases, first student feedback
Fourth dozen minor cases, second student feedback
Fifth dozen minor cases, third student feedback
First student presentation, forth student feedback
First set of intermediate cases; student presentation
Second set of intermediate cases; First major case
Third set of intermediate cases; student feedback
Forth set of intermediate cases: Second major case
Student presentation; student feedback
Student feedback and commentary; Third major case
Student feedback and commentary
Student feedback and commentary, Forth major case
Remaining major cases feedback and course summary
Assignments: Approximately 75% of the weekly classes will have assignments
regarding the week’s lecture material. Typically, the minor and intermediate case studies
will be given 1 week due dates, and the major case studies will be given 2 weeks due
dates. Of the 7 major case studies, only the Columbia study will be mandatory; the
students will be given choices as to which two of the remaining they wish to read and
report. All the studies will be provided in the lecturer feedback to the students.
Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is required to
register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of
verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure
that the letter is delivered to me (or to TA) as early as possible in the semester. DSP is
located in STU 301 and is open 8:30am -5pm, Monday through Friday. The phone
number for DSP is (213) 740-0776.
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Statement on Academic Integrity
USC seeks to maintain an optimal learning environment. General priniciples of academic
honesty include the concept of respect for the intellectual property of others, the
expection that individual work will be submitted unless otherwise allowed by an
instructor, and the obligations both to protect one’s own academic work from misuse by
others as well as to avoid using another’s work as one’s own. All students are expected
to understand and abide by these principles. Scampus, the student guidebook, contains
the Student Conduct Code in section 11.00, while the recommended sanctions are
loccated in Appendix A: http://www.usc.dept/publications/SCAMPUS/gov/. Students
will be referred to the Office of suspicion of academic dishonesty. The review process
can be found at:
http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/SJACS/
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