Wednesday October 19, 2022 5:45 PM PDT to 7:00 PM PDT

 

(Presentation is open to all, including non-members. Images courtesy of Pixabay on pexels.com)

Elevating your Game from Systems Engineering to System Family Engineering

Join us virtually on Wednesday, 19 October 2022 for a presentation by Dr. Charles Krueger, Founder and CEO of BigLever Software on the engineering a PRODUCT LINE vs. an individual point solution (full synopsis below).

PRESENTATION INFORMATION:

Date: Wednesday, 19 October 2022, 5:45 – 7:00PM Pacific Time (presentation begins at 6pm).
Cost: Free!
Location:  Virtual only.
Web-conference Link:

Zoom Meeting
https://incose-org.zoom.us/j/86460210004

Dial-in Number
1-669-444-9171
Meeting ID: 864 6021 0004

SYNOPSIS:

Virtually all systems engineering is performed in the context of a product line – a family of similar systems with variations in features and functions. Hardly anyone builds just one edition, just one flavor, just one point solution of anything. When presented with this hypothesis, the initial reaction from systems engineers is often disagreement. However, when pressed for examples where organizations build a complex system without deriving from an existing similar system and without the intent of building other similar systems, examples are not readily forthcoming.

Because of the inherent assumption in the system engineering community that systems engineering is primarily a methodology for building a single system, systems engineering methods and tools have traditionally focused on how to build the individual point solutions within a family rather than how to engineer a system family as a whole. This mismatch comes with significant risks. A recent study by the analyst firm Tech-Clarity, involving surveys of nearly 200 company leaders engineering products and systems, the number of product and system configurations is largely viewed as the top and growing source of complexity, which results in one of their top two business challenges. Engineering complexity slows progress and leads to defects, errors, and omissions, which in turn leads to the business risks of delays, budget overruns, recalls, system failures, and opportunity losses.

When systems in a system family are engineered as individual point solutions, techniques such as cloneand-own, branch-and-merge, and reuse repositories result in ever-growing duplicate and divergent engineering effort. Trying to manage the system family commonality and variation among these individually engineered systems relies on tribal knowledge and high bandwidth, error-prone interpersonal and document-based communication among different subject matter experts. Furthermore, when each engineering discipline adopts a different ad hoc technique for managing variations among the members of the system family, the result is error prone dissonance when trying to translate and communicate across the lifecycle.

This is self-inflicted complexity, over and above the complexity inherent in the systems being engineered. It consumes engineering teams with low-value, mundane, replicative work that deprives them of time and energy that would be better spent on high-value innovative work that advances system and business objectives. As more and more of systems engineering moves to model-based systems engineering (MBSE) where documents and tribal knowledge are replaced with sophisticated webs of digital information, the complexity of managing system family variation using tribal knowledge and other non-digital engineering techniques becomes an intractable mismatch.

Engineering a product line, or system family, holistically is much more effective and efficient than engineering each of the systems individually. This requires engineering the product line as a single System of Interest (SOI), with variations formally defined and managed to support the individual system instances within the family. This shift requires INCOSE and the engineering industry at large to elevate our thinking from Systems Engineering to System Family Engineering.

Feature-based Product Line Engineering (PLE), as defined by the new ISO/IEC 26580 standard, is the modern digital engineering approach to System Family Engineering. This presentation will explore how Feature-based PLE enables organizations to elevate from Systems Engineering to System Family Engineering. It plays an essential role in the new digital engineering age, offering engineering economies in effort, cost, time, scale and quality in some of the industry’s most challenging and complex system families.

For many organizations, Feature-based PLE represents a shift in engineering approach that requires organizational change along with commitment from engineering and business leadership to make that change. The return-on-investment (ROI) to justify the organizational change is in most cases compelling, based on the elimination of low-value, mundane, replicative work, with doubling, tripling and larger improvements in engineering metrics such as effort, cost, time, scale, and quality.

In consideration of this ROI, the question to leadership is, “What if your engineers could do their normal day’s work before lunch; what would you have them do in the afternoon?” There are many answers to this question, all of them good.

PRESENTER:  Dr. Charles Krueger, Founder and CEO of BigLever Software

Dr. Charles Krueger is founder and CEO of BigLever Software, which for over 20 years has helped organizations adopt and benefit from Feature-based Product Line Engineering (PLE). With more than 30 years of experience in systems and software engineering practice, he is a premier speaker, widely published author, and acknowledged thought leader in the PLE arena. He brings innovative PLE concepts, state-of-the-art methodologies, and success stories to the forefront of the systems engineering community. He was the lead editor for the ISO/IEC 26580 standard on Feature-based PLE and past co-chair for the INCOSE PLE International Working Group.

Saturday October 22, 2022 5:00 PM PDT to 8:30 PM PDT

 

Join us at our 2022 INCOSE San Diego STEM Event on 22 Oct!

(This event is open to all, including non-INCOSE members)

Register below

This October 22nd – A Fun Night of STEM-based family education honoring teachers and students!

Date: Saturday, October 22, 2022
Time: 5:00pm – 8:30pm
Address: Escondido Children Discovery Museum, 320 North Broadway, Escondido, CA 92025 (Google Maps)
Cost:  $30 Adults – $15 Children (K-12) – $70 Family Pack (includes 2 Adults and 4 Children – Children under 5 are free!  (You may also pay at the door, though pre-registration is highly encouraged as it helps us plan ahead).  Register here

This event is open to all so please invite friends and coworkers with families who would like to see the museum and have a great time!

Please join us for our 2022 SD INCOSE Science-Technology-Engineering-Math (STEM) celebration event in honor of our San Diego county teachers and students and their STEM projects, sponsored by generous STEM donations of San Diego corporations, individuals, and INCOSE members!

This event includes

• Dinner
• Live Magic Show by Amazing Dana!
  
• Admission to the Museum
• Presentation of science projects by the 2021 STEM award recipients!
• Raffle

This year’s event will be held at the San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum in Escondido, CA. This museum provides hands-on educational exhibits and programs focusing on science, art, and world cultures for over 100,000 visitors including children, families and school groups annually.  Come check it out!

Kids will love the hands-on experience with the center’s many Science, Art and world Culture activities. (Adults: semi-formal dress code in encouraged!)

Dinner will be provided by PIZZA TIME of Escondido, and will include:

* Appetizers – Garlic Bread nuts + Ranch and Marinara sauces
* Pizza
* Salad
* Desserts (Cupcakes)
* Beverages (Soft drinks + water)

Dinner will start at 6pm and go for approximately 1 hour!

Our Family Fun Magic Show will be presented by Amazing Dana!  All of the children, regardless of age (and the adults, too), will be involved and have a wonderful time! The show includes

* A Hilarious 45-Minute Magic Show
* All-Audience Participation
* Several of the adults and children will be asked to join Dana up front to participate in the magic
* All children will receive a magic trick and learn how to perform it
* For the Grand Finale, one of the children will float in the air! A photo opportunity you won’t want to miss

See more on Dana here.  The Magic Show will start at 7pm!

Since 1999, San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum has been “inspiring children to learn about our world through exploration, imagination, and experimentation.” Today we remain the only hands-on educational children’s museum in North San Diego County, serving children ages 0-10 with interactive exhibits and programs focused on science, world cultures, and art.

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” – Fred Rogers

Learning through play is the inspiration for all of San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum’s exhibits and programs as we encourage children to explore, imagine, experiment, and discover through hands-on science, art, and world cultures activities. In each area of the Museum, children learn important skills such as problem solving and observation, social and emotional development, cultural understanding, visual and spatial thinking, fine and gross motor skills, and language development.

The event will also include a RAFFLE of cool prizes!  Please inquire with the event officers on how to obtain tickets!

In addition, INCOSE is also accepting event sponsorships for STEM grant teachers and students. Please help support STEM recipient school teams – the teacher and 2 students – to attend this event for free. You can sponsor a student or teacher for $20 in addition to your own ticket, or sponsor them alone in the event you can’t make the event. Your help is appreciated – thank you!!

Questions?

Please contact us at info@sdincose.org with any questions you might have. We hope to see you there – thank you!