Introduction to Systems Engineering, Essay Example

Risk Management Plan for F-35 Aircraft

Recently, CNN reported that the new F35 aircraft faced a litany of performance issues. The development of this aircraft has become the most expensive in history and has not met schedule, budget, or meet the requirements, which is frowned down upon because of how costly this venture has become. It has taken fifteen years in the development of the Joint Strike Fighter program, and there have been cost increases and various schedule delays. The Marine Corps promulgated its development of the combat-ready F-35 fighter jet. As the fifth generation of the fighter jet model, the F-35 still faces a litany of maintenance, performance, and reliability issues that are significant, according to the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation. Despite the fact that senior military officials promoted the performance of F-35 aircrafts amidst various operational test trials conducted by the Marine Corps which purportedly proved that the fighter jet—which cost $400 billion—is finally ready to be used in actual combat. However, the POGO report thwarts these findings, stating the various F-35s used failed to reach the stipulated flight hours to be rendered combat-viable. Moreover, it was discovered that the trials of this aircraft lacked the capacity to demonstrate that the aircraft was operationally suitable or effective for deployment in various combat operation settings because of how poorly the trials were structured. SO 15288 defines all of the processes in system engineering, which includes defining the processes, planning activities, and utilizing available resources for risk management. The person in charge of the project needs to begin with defining the processes that bolster the definition, control, and ultimately improvement of the life cycle processes of the system within the F-35 project. Subsequent projects and organization can utilize the proscribed processes when they acquire and supply systems. All of the processes are mandated to undergo a variety of stress tests so that any and all failures could be detected immediately, which would mean that at the time of the run environment, no failure will manifest.

Management of the F-35 project mandates a balanced scorecard to be deployed in order to eliminate the problems and weaknesses that are evident in the traditional approach used in the F-35 project. The majority of the provided guidelines in the initial systems management  method do not have clear guidelines pertaining to how the government agency in charge of this project to balance from the financial perspectives. The current method just focused on external accounting data rather than specifying data of internal data, yet there are various new mechanisms that are more efficient and more advanced in order to provide a corrective within this systems. A balanced scorecard carries with it a variety of benefits, which include: assists organizations by coordinating all performance measures, including strategies used at the management level within a firm; increased creativity by paying attention to internal accounting in addition to external input for ideas that have not yet been introduced;  following a clear-cut, uniform methodology that adopts the best practices; the maximization of cooperation; and guidelines for employees  show cooperation with the systems in place.
As the Chief Systems Engineer chartered with launching the changes needed to insure passage of the most stringent requirements being placed on the F35, it is important to remember that timing is absolutely critical as the nation awaits a risk management plan. It is unequivocal that a positive restructuring of the risk management plan for the F-35, especially because of the austere budget cuts that are currently being made within this program. Software testing and integration is of paramount importance for the F-35 to be declared capable for full combat fighting. Because there remains more production-to-fix problems, that were pointed out during the testing, there must immediately be further changes to manufacturing and design. These changes need to be made prior to any further flight testing, which has yielded billions of dollars in costs. The articulation of a sound and coherent methodology would provide correctives to the risks that the F-35 project continues to pose.

Desired Customer Outcomes and Processes for Maximizing Profits

Assuming I have captured the Desired Customer Outcomes (DCO’s) in a formal House of Quality structure, I would have to engage in various processes that would convert the DCOs into formal requirements. Companies always seek to gain competitive advantages, which means finding a variety of ways to understand the desires, needs, and demands and how to satisfy their customers without having to compromise the revenues and profitability of the organization. Exceeding customer demands can also enhance customer satisfaction and give a company more advantages than it may already have.  Value chain analysis is one of the most critical tools used to measure customers’ perceived value, which enables a company to quantify the advantage that a company or organization has over their competitors. Based on the value chain analysis, a company is able to determine certain strategic parts regarding the activities that are undertaken. As a result, value chain analysis is one of the most useful tools companies can use to evaluate their competitive advantage. The company should also make use of several useful technologies that can be used to amplify successful operation. Some of these technologies include Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Supply Chain Management. These various enterprise technologies enables business processes facilitation the coordinate of a business. The procurement of raw materials, quality control, warehousing, the production of finished products, sales, advertising, and customer delivery can all be coordinated through these enterprise technologies.

Accompanying the increase in demand for quality commodities and services delivery, companies continue to try and change various organizational procedures in favor of the touted iterative methodology. Doing so enhances the quality in a step-by-step fashion, which would not be too costly. Scrum was developed by two Japanese engineers named Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi I 1986, and various companies have embraced this novel approach. Whenever a company makes new developments, according to this initiative, they release information about it for the purpose of testing it in order to get constructive feedback so that changes can be implemented for improvement purposes. This cycle would repeat throughout the product’s life under it is rendered obsolete or if the company/organization chooses to discard it in favor of something else. As a result, the primary focus is placed on the feedback mechanism.

New Product Development and Systems Engineering

Critical to the whole New Product Development process are the Ideation and Innovation sub-processes. There are three critical aspects to be addressed by Systems Engineers during these “Early Stages”: clear product definition, clear project justification / business case and clear project definition. The product definition process can sometimes neglect more optimal solutions if favored technologies or practices already in existence are accepted without being properly vetted or questioned. Because a clear product definition acts as a guide for that product’s development, it must have an optimal product concept in addition to a comprehensive list of stipulations that aids designers to make certain choices amidst the project development that enables advertisers to understand how the product will benefit once delivered and how it will fare within the market. QFD would be quite useful for the definition of a product, as it can be quite useful for designing procedures and processes so that a product meets the desires of consumers and fares well in the market. While it is not a mathematical construction, it nonetheless provides structure to aid the engineering team to identify various determinants of performance quality and the actions that will yield optimal performance. Indeed, it s a procedure in which the desires and needs of the stakeholder are disseminated throughout the various organizational levels so that the final service or product will satisfy the perceived desires and needs. This procedure can apply to the operation of a hospital or to how an ambulatory clinic is operated. The product definition begins as a development product, and thus customer needs must be translated into a neat set of product requirements that are more technical in nature and that Engineering acts upon. QFD provides the necessary methodology to bolster this objective while taking into account competition within the market. It is a structured decision-making and planning methodology for understanding customer desires and needs and translating them into product requirements, product traits, process plans, and production/quality plans vis-a-vis various matrices. The Business Case provides a justification for a project and is a good starting point for the development of an organization or project. It provides general information regarding the issues related to a business problem and includes a proposed initiative or project that will address the problem.  It details performance measures, benefits of the project,  justification and recommendations, assumptions, performance measures, and alternative options. The justification/Business case is the most difficult to lead because of blaring challenges that remain in the process. Domain-specific and model-based methodologies do provide various benefits, yet reconciling various domain assumptions to have systems that are domain-specific to inter-operate remains a problem. To increase the probability of success, further diagnostic testing is necessary in order to integrate various domains for proper functioning.