Welcome to our first issue of a reinvigorated LAI News. Here at Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI) at MIT, we are committed to finding new and creative ways of communicating with you, our members and readers, about the vitality of our shared LAI community.

LAI and our Educational Network (EdNet) offer our 60+ organizational members from industry, government, and academia the newest and best thinking, products, and tools related to lean enterprise transformation. We offer:

• unparalleled access to international thought leaders
• unique opportunities to engage with customers, suppliers, and partners to solve problems and share organizational transformation experiences
• an annual calendar of thought-provoking and highly regarded knowledge exchange events
• innovative lean products and methodologies

We have some exciting work under way and will be doing our best to capture highlights through LAI News, our website, and a new electronic newsletter, LAI Research Highlights, designed to cover an LAI research focus area in more depth. In our first issue in January Dr. Eric Rebentisch will present recent findings from and updates on LAI's product development research.

LAI is preparing for its annual research committee meeting on January 23, an important opportunity for LAI and our members to dialogue about research interests and problems, discuss early findings, and collaboratively shape our research agenda. In a new outreach effort, our research team is contacting each of our members through LAI executive board leadership to talk about current research interests and challenges. We will be including this important feedback in our January discussions.

You have no doubt noted our name and logo change (from Lean Aerospace Initiative), a reflection of a spring 2007 board vote and growing interest in lean enterprise transformation from a variety of industries. We continue to celebrate our roots in the aerospace community and look forward to welcoming new members and enriching our collective experience and knowledge base.

Speaking of welcomes, please join me in recognizing EdNet's newest and 35th member, Universidad Popular Autonoma del Estado de Puebla based in Puebla, Mexico. We have begun to strategize around planning some international events, beginning wtih LAI participation in MIT's global research and development in Lisbon in March 2008. We have recently begun collecting data on our web site traffic and every month are welcoming several thousand visitors from some 150 countries.

We hope that you will continue to take advantage of our knowledge exchange events (KEEs), which are wonderful opportunities to interact and learn with and from fellow members, colleagues, and MIT researchers. Participation at our events has increased by 35% since we began offering them in January 2007.

As always we welcome your feedback and suggestions and look forward to a productive new year.

Happy holidays from all of us here at LAI.

Debbie

Enterprise Transformation and Organizational Change

What makes enterprise transformation unique and different from organizational change? These are the questions that Dr. George Roth and others at LAI have been working in LAI's enterprise change research. Building upon existing literature and new case studies at Rockwell Collins, Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, Raytheon Missile Systems, Ariens, and Letterkenny Army Depot (with in-process case studies of UTC's ACE program), we are developing a theory for what makes enterprise transformation successful and finding differences from traditional organizational change approaches. These differences involve five organizational capabilities that enabled successful lean changes and include:

• Rethinking organizational boundaries
• Installing innovation sets
• Pushing and pulling change
• Setting in place structures and processes that enable virtuous learning
• Seeking growth opportunities
• Distributing leadership practices

Each of these capabilities involves unique practices consistent with lean culture and change. Successfully orchestrating a system of change is a challenge for enterprise leaders. The transformation has a magnitude, wholeness, and depth dimensions. The magnitude encompasses the many differences in the characteristics of mass production organizations and lean enterprises. Wholeness has to do with switching between configurations, or with moving from one organizational logic, archetype, or gestalt to another. The depth of the change deals with the basic assumptions that are the root of organization culture. Each dimension of change on its own implies a significant shift. Together the set of changes points to an enormous abyss over which leaders must guide their organizations, and successful leaders know that crossing it successfully requires a great leap. LAI's lean enterprise change research will illustrate how some leaders have, and other leaders can, make this leap

INCOSE Lean Systems Engineering Working Group To Meet
in January

The International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) has a rapidly growing working group on lean systems engineering. The working group is co-chaired by Dave Cleotelis of Raytheon, Bo Oppenheim of Loyola Marymount University (an LAI EdNet member), and Deb Secor of Rockwell Collins. The next major meeting is scheduled during the 2008 INCOSE International Workshop January 27-28 in Albuquerque, NM. The group is focused on strengthening systems engineering (SE) practice by exploring and capturing the synergy between traditional SE and lean. In addition to serving as a community of interest, the group is working on a number of products, and the INCOSE website hosts a small but growing SE knowledge repository, including definitions, links, a reading list, and presentation materials.

In a related effort, the INCOSE Measurement Working Group has collaborated with LAI on developing the Systems Engineering Leading Indicators Guide Version 1.0, which was released in July 2007. The Guide is now part of IBM's Rational® Unified Process® (RUP®)--a process framework of best practices for iterative software and systems development and delivery based on many years of direct experience with clients.

For more information please contact Dr. Donna Rhodes.

We continue to add resources to our website and have introduced a new member spotlight to highlight noteworthy developments in our consortium. We welcome your submissions. LAI has developed media partnerships with Aviation Week (please see our announcement in the December 3 issue), WCBF, and Exostar. We have formed a communications working group with LAI staff and members that will collaborate on developing stronger linkages and keep the consortium abreast of all that is happening in our community. We'll be sending you LAI News and LAI Research Highlights on an alternating monthly basis; please look for the first issue of LAI Research Highlights in January.

Please contact Nicolene Hengen, LAI's membership and communications manager, directly at 617.253.7633, with your thoughts and suggestions.

Mark J. Davis, Major, USAF Fellow and MIT System Design and Management Program master's candidate, is working on a thesis titled "Synchronization of System-of-Systems Interfaces in Military Satellite Communications." He investigates potential improvements in change management processes within government system program offices for system of systems (SoS) acquisition. His work is based on data from the Air Force Military Satellite Communications (MILSATCOM) Systems Wing in El Segundo, CA. Military satellite communications programs have expanded over the last decade from three distinct satellite constellations with dedicated ground, ship, and airborne terminals to several existing and planned satellite constellations and dozens of multi-purpose terminal variants. Most of the new systems must operate with both legacy and new systems, which has given rise to new external system interfaces that span program boundaries within large SoSs. Although the MILSATCOM System Wing has a framework to manage the SoS interfaces, there is room for improvement. Initial data and analysis suggest that, by applying lean principles and SoS engineering best practices, synchronization of change can be dramatically improved and the configuration management process timeline can be reduced by more than 50%. The potential result is savings of millions of dollars in scrap and rework. Maj. Davis makes recommendations on how to implement a synchronized and lean configuration management process in a government system program office.

Robb Wirthlin, Major, USAF, and doctoral candidate in MIT's Engineering Systems Division, is researching enterprise-level risk relating to large complex systems acquisitions. He is investigating whether current multi-project management techniques (such as portfolio management) adequately address risk at an enterprise level--risk that is not captured by individual programs and is more than a simple enumeration of risks of individual systems in development. The US Air Force, as an enterprise engaged in large, complex systems development, is a rich environment for studying these issues. His initial analysis suggests that product development portfolio management, as implemented by sectors of the Air Force, has difficulty articulating and responding to the risks a product development portfolio faces. Maj. Wirthlin is working on a model to better characterize these issues and hopes that future experimentation will provide new enterprise-level insights. Maj. Wirthlin will make recommendations for product development enterprises seeking to leverage risk for an improved "value" proposition.

LAI's Educational Net work (EdNet) Director Dr. Earll Murman, MIT professor emeritus, is the recipient of the SAE International/American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) William Littlewood Memorial Lecture Award. Dr. Murman will present his lecture at the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit in Reno, Nevada, Jan. 7-10, 2008.

LAI's Educational Network Welcomes 35th Member

The Universidad Popular Autonoma del Estado de Puebla (UPAEP) has become the 35th member of the Lean Advancement Initiative's Educational Network (EdNet). University President Dr. Alfredo Miranda and colleagues visited LAI on Dec. 10. In April 2008 LAI researcher Dr. Ricardo Valerdi will speak at UPAEP's anniversary celebration for its Deparrtment of Engineering, Technology, and Information.

(L-R): LAI researcher Dr. Ricardo Valerdi, LAI Membership and Communications Manager Nicolene Hengen, and UPAEP visitors Vicerrector Academico Herberto Regordosa, President Dr. Alfredo Miranda, and Professor Pablo Nuno

Jan. 10: CIO Roundtable working group, MIT, led by LAI researcher JK Srinivasan

Jan. 14-17: LAI Lean Academy Plus®, The University of Alabama, Huntsville

Jan. 26-29: INCOSE International Workshop, Albuqerque

March 26-27: MIT in Europe Conference, Global Research and Development: Strategic Directions, Lisbon

April 29-May 2, WCBF 4th Annual Lean Sigma Six Summit, Chicago
Debbie Nightingale will be speaking and LAI members are being offered a 15% discount. When registering, please quote reference 5082/LAI/15 to claim your discount.

LAI has partnered with Aviation Week; please see LAI's announcement on p. 47 in the Dec. 03 issue.

Lane, J., Valerdi, R., "Synthesizing SoS Concepts for Use in Cost Modeling," Systems Engineering, Vol. 10, No. 4, Dec 2007

Valerdi, R., Ross, A. M., Rhodes, D. H., "A Framework for Evolving System of Systems Engineering," Crosstalk, The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, Oct. 2007

MIT Engineering Systems Division Working Paper Series:
"Measuring Systems Engineering Success: Insights from Baseball,"
Craig Blackburn, master's candidate and USAF 2d Lt, and Dr. Ricardo Valerdi, Nov. 2007

MIT Visiting Professor Michael Hammer's "The 7 Deadly Sins of Performance Measurement and How to Avoid Them," MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2007

LAI is planning its exciting annual conference April 22-24 in Boston.
Lean Enterprise Transformation 2008 is an important opportunity to interact with and learn from LAI community members. We invite you to submit your ideas for panels and tutorials. Please save the dates and plan to join us.