With unprecedented budget cuts resulting from Sequestration and a United States economy that has not yet rebounded, `do more with less' is the new motto for both industry and government. However, that is easier said than done. With 70% of a product's life cycle cost set at the concept...
Costs of aerospace missions have increased over the last twenty years, placing the future of the space program in jeopardy. A potential source for such growth can be attributed to the complex multidisciplinary and challenging nature of earth and space science instrument development. Design...
There is an increasing backlog of potentially toxic compounds that cannot be evaluated with current animal-based approaches and models in a cost effective and expeditious manner, thus putting human health at risk. In addition, extrapolation of animal-based test results for human risk assessment...
Department of Defense (DoD) leadership released the Better Buying Power initiatives to help DoD do more with less. A key tenet of these initiatives is to increase small business roles in DoD contracting opportunities. Reasons for increasing small business opportunities include promoting...
While system complexity is on the rise across many product lines, the resources required to successfully design and implement complex systems remain constrained. Because financiers of complex systems development efforts actively monitor project implementation cost, project performance models are...
Risk identification during the design and development phases of complex systems is commonly implemented but often fails to result in the identification of events and circumstances that truly challenge project performance. Inefficiencies in cost and schedule estimation are usually held accountable...
As a result of the reuse of legacy systems by the Department of Defense (DoD), DoD programs often experience overruns and technical difficulties. With the constriction of DoD budgets, reuse of legacy systems is frequently touted as the solution to cost, efficiency, and time to delivery problems;...
A System Dynamics Approach to Implementing Consumer Experience in Technology Adoption ModelsThe ethanol-fuel ecosystem presents a common narrative seen in many systems whose components include durable goods with high switching costs to the consumer: Market growth does not match policy...
Redundant outputs from multiple positioning systems are not typically fused together on moving vehicles, resulting in unrealized opportunities in minimizing any combined position error and uncertainty. Satellite navigation is commonly used in timing and positioning applications, and combined with...
The lack of comprehensive software obsolescence risk forecasting and assessment methodologies presents a challenge to managing overall system obsolescence risk. This is especially the case for systems with a high utilization of commercial electronic components or software applications with a long...
Software vulnerabilities that enable well-known exploit techniques for committing computer crimes are preventable, but they continue to be present in releases. When Blackhats (i.e., malicious researchers) discover these vulnerabilities they oftentimes release corresponding exploit software and...
Studies demonstrate that differences in how product development organizations and product realization organizations interpret requirements can lead to poor quality outcomes. Other research shows that, in comparison to communicating requirements inside an organization, communicating requirements...
Engineering firms continue to adopt the practice of utilizing virtual teams, which faces unique challenges and requires additional management considerations compared with co-located teams. While virtual teams offer incentives in terms of flexibility and cost savings, engineering firms should be...
In the last decade, universities and the federal government have studied the use of Unintended Radiated Emissions (URE) for security applications. The published studies have shown multi-second and larger processing times, which are not suitable for many security scenarios, which require fraction...