Massimo
Usan Wins
SDM’s
First Best Thesis Award
By
Lois Slavin, ESD Communications
Director – December 16, 2005
The
alumni community from MIT’s System Design and Management (SDM)
Program recently honored Massimo Usan with its first best thesis award.
The award was created to foster reciprocal links between alumni and
students and recognize outstanding thesis work.
Usan,
who graduated from SDM in June, 2005, is a Program Manager for ArvinMeritor
in Italy. His thesis, entitled "Automotive Component Product Development
Enhancement through Multi-Attribute System Design Optimization in an
Integrated Concurrent Engineering Framework," was chosen in a two-step
process by SDM thesis advisors and SDM alumni judges.
Upon
receiving the award, Usan “As someone who loves engineering, science,
and management, having the opportunity to come to MIT was a privilege,
an honor, and an invaluable experience. In the SDM program I learned
things that opened my mind and eyes – things that unexpectedly
changed me in an irreversible way.”
Usan
also expressed gratitude for support from his ArvinMeritor managers
and his thesis advisors. "I am thankful to my thesis advisors –
Professors Dan Whitney and Olivier de Weck – who together with
my manager, Winfried Willeke, and my ArvinMeritor mentor at that time,
John Grace, provided me with constant support and the freedom to express
myself to the greatest extent."
According
to Professor de Weck, Usan first started his research as a term project
in 16.888/ESD.77J in the 2004 spring semester and then continued during
the thesis. His goal was to create a prototype of an Enhanced Development
Framework in which Product Development could be executed in a semi-automatic
way with the purpose of dramatically reducing development time and cost
and, at the same time of creating products with higher performances.
The
system used as an example was an internal combustion engine “maniverter”,
the combination of an exhaust system manifold and catalytic converter
for a gasoline engine. Particular emphasis was placed on the breadth
of the engineering disciplines considered – which include fluid
dynamics, pressure waves propagation, thermal management, vibrational
behavior and mass properties – and on the inclusion of business
elements, in the form of a manufacturing cost model. The platform, adequately
simplified to cope with the project constraints, featured a bus architecture
where the different analyses modules can be excluded and included with
minor effort. Commercially available software was used, with some customization
for the particular use.
“I
was initially concerned that this was much too ambitious,” recalled
de Weck “However, Massimo was not only able to create and calibrate
this model using a real engine model, but he also linked it to multi-objective
optimization and created a consortium of companies that were interested
in participating in the project on the pure basis of the idea and without
any cash compensation. In the end he even quantitatively estimated what
the implementation of such a multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO)
framework could mean in terms of development time, staffing and cost
at the enterprise level. "
De
Weck said that there are other reasons that Usan’s work deserved
commendation. "There is a perception by some that SDM theses are
practical and industry-oriented, but don't lend themselves to publishable
scholarship,” he explained. “Massimo has shown that this
is not true and that industrial relevance and scientific rigor can and
should be combined. He has published his thesis research at an AIAA
conference, at the Third MIT Conference on Computational Fluid and Solid
Mechanics, at the Engineous User Conference, MSC Virtual Product Development
Conference and is working on further publications and implementation
of these ideas in his company. He is therefore a prime example of the
kind of system architect and systems engineer MIT had in mind when it
created the SDM program in the mid 1990s."
The
SDM best thesis prize will be awarded on a pilot basis for three years
and consists of a cash prize and a certificate.
***
To
view a related publication by Usan*, click here.
*Usan
M., Whitney D., de Weck O.L., "Exhaust System Manifold Development
Enhancement through Multi-Attribute System Design Optimization",
AIAA-2005-2066, 1st AIAA Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Specialist
Conference , Austin , Texas , April 18-21, 2005
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