Lean Enablers for Systems Engineering

Speaker

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Bo Oppenheim

Location

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Loyola Marymount University
1 LMU Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90045
Directions

Abstract

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Systems engineering has become increasingly important as the complexity and interconnectedness of systems continue to grow, but there remains a great deal of uncertainty as to how systems engineering should most effectively and efficiently add value throughout a program’s lifecycle. Lean thinking is the dynamic, knowledge-driven, and customer-focused process through which an enterprise continuously eliminates waste and creates value, well proven in other disciplines. Systems engineering and lean have overlaps and differences, but both represent processes that evolved over time with the common goal of delivering best product or system lifecycle value to the customer. Lean Systems Engineering represents synergy of the two, hopefully leading to superior systems engineering process and programs. Lean Enablers for Systems Engineering is a product designed by 14 experts from industry (BSDC, Honeywell, NGIS, Rockwell Collins, ELOP-Israel), government (USAF SMC and U.K. MoD) academia (LMU, MIT, Stanford, and USC), working under the INCOSE Lean Systems Engineering Working Group. The Enablers are formulated as 194 "do's" and "don'ts" of the systems engineering and program management practice, and are based on the elimination of waste and optimal creation of value. The workshop will consist of four parts:

1. History of Lean Systems Engineering
   
2. Introduction to Lean, Value, and Waste in product development programs
   
3. Description of the development process of Lean Enablers for SE
   
4. Presentation of 194 Lean Enablers organized into six Lean Principles: Value, Value Stream Mapping, Flow, Pull, Perfection, and People
   
5. Validation of the Lean Enablers by survey, and by comparisons with recent studies by NASA and U.S. Government Accounting Office.

Biography

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Bohdan "Bo" W. Oppenheim is the founder and Co-Chair of the Lean Systems Engineering Working Group of INCOSE, and leader of the development effort of Lean Enablers for Systems Engineering. He is a Professor of Mechanical and Systems Engineering and Graduate Director of Mechanical Engineering at LMU in Los Angeles, California. He serves as the local Coordinator of the Educational Network of Lean Advancement Initiative consortium at MIT. He is on the Steering Committee of the Lean Education Academic Network. For seven years he served as a Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Industrial Assessment Center assessing 125 U.S. industrial plants for productivity. He consulted Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Airbus, Telekomunikacja Polska, and 50 other firms on Lean, Systems Engineering, and Quality. He has $2.5 million in externally funded grants on his credit. He teaches graduate courses on Lean Systems Engineering, Lean Manufacturing, Lean Product Development, Lean Final Engineering, Lean Office, Lean Suppy Chain, and Quality. He was born in Warsaw, Poland. His engineering degrees include a Ph.D. from Southampton, U.K. in Systems Dynamics; Engineer's Degree from MIT in Ocean System Dynamics; Master's from Stevens Institute of Technology in Ocean Engineering; and B.S. (equiv.) from Warsaw Technical University in Aeronautics. His professional experience spans space, naval, mechanical, software, and manufacturing industries, including four years at Northrop and five at The Aerospace Corporation.