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By
Lois
Slavin, ESD Communications Director
– June 9, 2004
On
April 26, 2004, Daniel Roos, Japan
Steel Industry Professor, Associate
Dean for Engineering Systems, and
Co-Director of MIT’s Engineering
Systems Division delivered the third
annual Charles L. Miller Memorial
Lecture. The title was “Engineering
Systems: Past Perspectives and Future
Visions.”
The
event was introduced by Professor
Emeritus Robert D. Logcher, of the
Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering (CEE) and a member of
the Miller Memorial Committee. Logcher
gave a brief overview of the state
of the Civil Engineering (CE) Department
in 1962 – a time when there
were just 13 sophomores.
“CE
was not seen as exciting and the department
lacked cutting-edge research,”
recalled Logcher. “Dean Brown
was seeking dramatic change, so he
looked to Charlie Miller, who recognized
that computers would revolutionize
CE and change the ways we practice
and teach engineering. Miller also
saw computing as a producer of large,
complex systems that could solve society’s
broader needs.”
That’s
not all. He hired Dan Roos, Joe Sussman,
Fred Moavenzadeh, Dave Marks, and
others, inspiring them to think out
of the box and raising funds for them
from industry to help support their
research.
After
Logher’s remarks, James Champy,
BS, MS CE, President, CEO of Perot
Consulting, formerly Miller’s
teaching assistant and Sussman’s
first office mate, introduced Roos,
calling him an “intellectual
leader and a friend who has laid the
groundwork for Engineering Systems
and the future of Engineering at MIT.”
Roos
began by expressing profound gratitude
to Charles Miller, noting that”
if it were not for him, I would not
be here today because I had no intention
of getting a Ph.D. or joining the
faculty.” However Miller, as
Roos’ advisor, provided him
with many opportunities to develop.
Roos
then provided a brief overview of
the development of Engineering Systems
at MIT, in relation to the growing
need for a new type of engineer who
can provide leadership across technological,
organizational, political, and societal
boundaries. Roos divided this evolution
into three parts:
- Technology
and the Civil Sector (1975-1985)
– This period was characterized
externally by the end of the Apollo
program, reductions in NASA and
DoD programs, and the publication
of Rachel Carson’s “Silent
Spring” and Ralph Nader’s
“Unsafe at any Speed,”
Simultaneously within MIT SoE Dean
Alfred Kiel’s focus on socio-economic
systems led to establishing several
research centers. These included
the Center for Policy Alternatives
in 1971; the Center for Transportation
Studies (now the Center for Transportation
and Logistics) in 1973, which shifted
the focus from highway engineering
to transportation systems via research
and its interdisciplinary MS in
Transportation; and the Technology
and Policy Program in 1975,
which provided an interdisciplinary
education for scientists and engineers.
Roos noted that Kiel unsuccessfully
attempted to abolish all of the
academic departments in the SoE
and replace them with a new structure,
but nevertheless the aforementioned
accomplishments “had a tremendous
international impact on transportation
education and practice."
-
U.S. Industrial Competitiveness
(1986-1996) – Sloan, the SoE
and industry began to converge,
focusing respectively on technology
as a strategic advantage, a back
to basics approach in design engineering,
and new ways to educate students
in manufacturing to compete with
Japan. MIT’s responses included
engineering systems-based research
centers and academic programs. These
included the International Motor
Vehicle Program. Founded in 1985,
IMVP produced the bestselling book,
“The Machine that Changed
the World,” which emphasized
lean production as an engineering
system and the importance of system
architecture. Other notable milestones
included the Commission on Industrial
Productivity, which began in 1987,
under President Paul Gray, and published
“Made in America;” the
Committee on Large-Scale Systems,
founded in 1987 under Institute
Professor Joel Moses, then head
of EECS, which explored open and
closed systems; the interdisciplinary
Leaders
for Manufacturing Program, founded
in 1988 and devoted to “Big
M” manufacturing; and the
System
Design and Management Program,
created in 1996 to concentrate on
product development.
-
Future Planning (1996-1998) –
A fourth interdisciplinary program,
the Master
of Engineering in Logistics
(MLOG), which also focused on supply
chain management, was formed in
1998. Although MLOG and its practice-oriented
“sibling” programs were
very successful, institutionally
there were problems administering
them because only the departments
could admit students and hire faculty.
Although a new unit called the Engineering
Systems Division (ESD) had been
proposed in 1995 by a “Big
E” Engineering Committee,
it was opposed by MIT faculty for
several reasons, among them the
belief that engineering systems
were not a real discipline because
they were too “soft”
and lacking in intellectual content.
Nevertheless,
ESD was officially formed in 1998.
The Division now works across all
of MIT’s engineering departments,
the Sloan School of Management, School
of Humanities and Social Sciences,
and School of Architecture and Urban
Planning and is able to hire or appoint
dual and joint faculty and admit students.
ESD’s
mission is twofold: to establish engineering
systems as a field of study focusing
on complex engineered systems and
products viewed in a broad human,
social, and industrial context; and
to use the new knowledge gained to
improve engineering education and
practice.
“ESD
has a broad scope because engineering
systems requires a different way of
thinking about problem solving,”
Roos emphasized. “For example,
manufacturing is only one part of
making a car. With an engineering
systems approach, one would also be
concerned a very complicated, multidimensional
complexity that involves a social
agenda, such as the transportation
infrastructure, a car’s impact
on the environment, sustainability,
energy, plus unknown emergent properties.”
Roos
gave a brief overview of the characteristics
and perspectives of engineering systems.
These included technical complexity,
also known as the “illities”
– quality, flexibility, sustainability,
maintainability, robustness; organizational
complexity, as viewed in terms of
the extended enterprise; contextual
complexity, viewed from a societal
perspective and taking into account
qualitative, as well as quantitative,
analysis; and evaluative complexity,
which include multiple stakeholders
and life cycle analyses.
Roos
also asserted that “engineering
systems requires a different way of
thinking.” He explained that
the starting point must be system
architecture, which is holistic; the
context must be considered in the
design process; and that learning
how to manage uncertainty in the design
process is crucial.
Noting
that ESD inherited the existing academic
programs and several research centers
(the Center
for Transportation & Logistics;
the Center
for Technology, Policy, and Industrial
Development; The
Industrial Performance Center;
and the Center
for Innovation in Product Development),
Roos also pointed to several new ESD
initiatives, among them ESD’s
new PhD program, its Engineering Systems
Learning Center, which will be a repository
for materials used by MIT, other universities,
and industry,
and the NSF-funded Program
on Emerging Technologies (PoET).
Roos
then reported on a University workshop
held by ESD in October 2003 attended
by representatives of 15 of the top
Engineering schools in the U.S. and
Europe. There they shared how each
school was addressing the subject
of engineering systems and came to
the agreement that while the legitimacy
of engineering systems was still a
concern, nevertheless, a new community
and field of study is emerging. As
importantly, they agreed to work together
to evolve the field.
This
workshop was followed in March, 2004,
by ESD’s Engineering Systems
Symposium, which brought together
over 350 attendees, including leaders
from 18 leading Engineering universities,
government, and industry. (Click here
to review conference agenda and here
for a write-up.) Described as a “call
to arms” by conference co-chair
Professor Tom Allen, the Symposium
confirmed the importance of engineering
systems, created a community of engineering
systems academicians and practitioners,
and established MIT’s leadership
in this emerging field.
Roos
concluded by highlighting the realities
and the challenges of engineering
systems in general and specifically
for the engineering profession. “Developing
engineering systems required leaders
that understand technology,”
he said. “We have a committed
faculty who bring differing perspectives
together around a common vision, the
MIT School of Engineering/Sloan connection,
a track record of successfully implemented
academic programs, the Deans’
support, and industry’s involvement
as an interactive partner. Our journey
has just begun.”
Editor’s
note: To view the Professor Roos’
entire presentation, please click
here.
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