ASEM Blog

By Gene Dixon, ASEM President

April 2015 Pres. Release

Every now and then I go back and look at my list of goals for life.  Call it a bucket list if you would like but I think I’m too young for that.  Bucket lists are for those with a short fuse.  I’ve always had a goal to live to the ripe old age of 120.  Okay, we don’t need that image.

Some of my goals are lofty ambitions, some maybe are cellar dwellers. Still they are important.  To me.

Still, the achievement of my goals, and yours too I suspect, require some work (there, I used my favorite four letter word), some methods and tools, some thought.  Sometimes our goals require support.  Maybe some infrastructure.  A system or two.  And definitely a plan of action.  All this represents a system for goal achievement.

At ASEM World HQ, there is a lot of work going on right now to improve your Society’s infrastructure.  It was time.  It was time for new systems to support our growth not only in the US but across the globe.  When you see Geert Letens, Trish Simo Kush, Paul (Kauffmann), the other Paul (Componation) or Patrick Kush, ask them what is going on.  They and many others like Executive Directors Bill Daughton and Dave Wyrick, the UAH support staff as well as Angie Cornelius are doing some great things to make sure we are positioned with the right tools and methods and systems to support the needs of a growing ASEM.

Growing ASEM?  Sounds like a good place for a growth goal.  I agree.  And, trust me the ASEM Executive Committee has been discussing goals. And value propositions.  And making sure we have the systems in place to support the needs of a growing society.

I also think about a vision for ASEM.  I’d like to believe a vision is the predecessor to goals. And a vision sets the stage for strategy or strategies. 

Ask me about a vision for ASEM and I’ll talk to you about a worldwide recognized voice for engineering management.  A 10,000 strong diverse membership known for cutting edge EM research and respected for developing evolving principles of application for practitioners.  I may speak about 100,000 ASEM certified AEM/PEM practitioners that are routinely called on to practice leadership, systems engineering and strategic management in solving the unsolvable with engineering.

I may even talk about resolving global issues and local problems with engineering.

But you didn’t ask.

I’ll ask you, though.  What is your vision for ASEM? What systems and methods and infrastructure are needed?  What goals will make that vision real?  For you.  For me.  For ASEM.  For the brotherhood of mankind.

I like goals.  Let’s make a goal to meet in Indy for the ASEM IAC. It’s the ASEM 250!

Gene

In other news...

It’s time.  The best part of ASEM is the network.  Part of ASEM’s network is our awards program.  We want to recognize you.  We also want to recognize those members who are making contributions to ASEM.  Log onto our webpage (www.asem.org) and click on the awards link.  That will open up to a page to links to all of our society awards.  Find the one that you are interested and learn more about making your nomination.

Also, President-elect Geert Letens is working with a committee to identify nominees for leadership positions within ASEM.  If you would like to serve as an elected officer, contact Geert (geert.letens@gmail.com) for more information.
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Author: Frederick "Ken" Sexe

The intent of this blog is to provide a small description of both of these thinking methods with the hope that it spawns curiosity in others to learn more about how these thinking styles work. These theories can be found in several of Russ Ackoff’s books such as Ackoff’s Best and Systems Thinking for Curious Managers as well as on YouTube.

Conventional thinking can be separated into two different methods. Analysis is a reductionist method that involves studying an item by reducing it to its constituent parts and studying the behavior or properties of each part separately in an effort to aggregate an understanding of the whole. Synthesis is a systems-based method that involves understanding the role or function of the item within a containing system and studying how the interactions of the parts within it aid the item in fulfilling their role within the system.

There are frequent arguments as to which of the two methods is most effective. In actuality, each method answers different types of questions. Analysis is best for answering “how to” questions; for instance, if an individual needs to understand how a car functions the individual can reduce a car to its various components to find the answer. Synthesis, on the other hand, provides us with answers to “why” questions. For example, if an individual needs to understand why a car has wheels and not tracks the individual can look at a car’s role within the greater system (in this example, to provide reliable transportation on land) to understand why a car design has wheels (and why tracks may be more suitable if the role of the car within the larger system changes).

Understanding the role of an item within a system also aids in designing the enclosing system also (in this example, since the car is designed with rubber tires the containing roads system can be redesigned to take advantage of this fact). Synthesis is also a design-based methodology with several problem-solving and decision-making methods focusing on improving a system through an understanding of how each component interacts with others to perform the role of the system. Analysis and synthesis are complementary to each other and in some instances can be used at the same time (for instance, cognitive work analysis includes abstraction hierarchy which uses synthesis and abstraction decomposition which uses analysis). Analysis cannot yield understanding of a system yet synthesis cannot explain how parts within a system perform their role.
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Frederick (Ken) Sexe is a lifelong learner currently wrapping up his PhD in Engineering Management and Organizational Psychology at Northcentral University. His hobbies include challenging prevailing patterns of thinking that discourage new ideas while developing new ways to do things. He is currently employed as a Senior Systems Engineer at Raytheon where he is taking a career break from management to pursue his educational goals and focus on his family.

Author: Frederick "Ken" Sexe

How much do you trust what your eyes tell you? Before you answer please take this quick test on selective attention. This video comes from the Visual Cognition Laboratory at the University of Illinois and Viscog Productions.

A recent newsletter from a friend and colleague of mine, Gwendolyn Galsworth, at www.visualworkplace.com reminds me that much of what happens in an organization occurs out of plain sight yet is critical for its operation. Problems within an organization can occur when decision-makers fail to extend their solutions beyond what they see to interactions ‘hidden in plain sight’ that may hold more effective solutions. The main strength of workplace visuality is in modifying the flow of workplace tasks so that reliance on visual cognition is reduced which in turn reduces the potential for visual cognition errors such as selective attention.

Most people do not see the gorilla in the video even though both videos had the same gorilla walking through it. Why is the gorilla not seen the first time? Because the mind filters what it sees by focusing solely on the white jerseys while ignoring everything else (and since the gorilla was the same color as the other people bouncing the basketball it was subsequently filtered out). When the video is watched the second time the mind removes the filter created by the need to count white jersey basketball player interactions.

Two examples illustrate how selective attention can manifest itself in an engineering team. A major engineering company had an instance where a serious flaw outside the inspection criterion was constantly overlooked during inspection. The solution implemented by management was to increase inspection of the part in question by adding an inspector. Subsequent inspections increased the number of parts identified with the flaw caught but the total number of systems avoiding detection still remained high because although they were each assigned to inspect a certain thing the two inspectors did not see flaws missed by the other inspector. Engineers faced with a design flaw with a power supply in an avionics system focused solely on electrical solutions until a young mechanical engineer challenged the predominant thinking by considering it as a thermal issue. Subsequent testing resulted in identifying a way to improve cooling requiring significantly less redesign than any of the electrical solutions required.

An individual, when faced with a problem in his immediate workplace, views the problem based on his or her perspective while ignoring any other solutions. Organizational roles in which inspection is used as the source of quality become suspect as relying solely on inspection increases the possibility that individuals responsible for inspection will overlook problems outside of their inspection criteria. This is especially true of "good" parts that may pass inspection yet may cause problems elsewhere in the design they are a part of.
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Frederick (Ken) Sexe is a lifelong learner currently wrapping up his PhD in Engineering Management and Organizational Psychology at Northcentral University. His hobbies include challenging prevailing patterns of thinking that discourage new ideas while developing new ways to do things. He is currently employed as a Senior Systems Engineer at Raytheon where he is taking a career break from management to pursue his educational goals and focus on his family.

Author: Gene Dixon, ASEM President

March 2015

It was cool. Very cool. At the Alexander that is. Site of the 2015 ASEM IAC. The ASEM Board tried to meet there earlier but the country’s snow bound status made it difficult for several members to attend. Still it was cool. Not just the temperature. This is a concierge level hotel, with great spaces, great meeting rooms and a great location. Minutes from the heart of Indianapolis. Steps from great restaurants. Within eyesight of Lucas Oil Stadium, Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Victory Field, and a great museum (okay, I did pick up an Ansel Adams print there). It was cool. You should plan on joining us for the 2015 IAC, Driving Change: An Engineering Management Imperative. There is something else special about Indy...maybe I’ll think of it later.

ASEM is pleased to have started an initial collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Engineer’s Engineering Management Division. This division is comprised of over 200 renowned Chinese engineers who are the leading thinkers in Chinese engineering management. They have over 200,000 EM students at the college level. Their flagship magazine, Frontiers of Engineering Management is a relative new publication that is published quarterly. The FEM has opportunities for authors to publish internationally. The FEM is also seeking reviewers and associate editors. This is a great added value for ASEM members to engage with EM specialists from across the globe. Several ASEM members have been invited to China for the Engineering Management International Summit Forum in Guangzhou China in May of this year. Part of this visit will include détente on furthering the relationships that are forming between ASEM and the CAE’s EMD.

Here’s something for you. Be on the lookout for a special opportunity to get your own ASEM EMBoK.

If you are interested in participating in any of the opportunities above, from China to Indy, please let me hear from you. I think that would be cool.

Oh, that’s it. Indy has a quilt shop. Dearly Beloved likes that. She’ll be there in October.

Gene

Author: Frederick "Ken" Sexe

I was recently reminded of how actors acting in their best interest within a system can destroy a system in a blog by Seth Godin about the Newfoundland fishing industry in 1992. Fishermen optimizing their catch without regulation resulted in overfishing and the collapse of the northern cod species that has yet to recover in a systems phenomenon known as the tragedy of the commons (incidentally, there was a brilliant paper and presentation at the ASEM International Annual Conference that explains this in detail). This example reminds us that when individual parts of a system are optimized without consideration of the other parts it can lead to destruction of the system.

Can a system be optimized? I have posed this question to both system thinkers and those new to systems with varying answers. Systems are difficult to optimize because of two main factors: first, systems enter into a state of homeostasis in which all of the parts within the system interact with each other to reach equillibrium. The second is that feedback within a system can be delayed resulting in insufficient information to make accurate changes to a system. Effective regulation of a system therefore requires management from outside the system so that the effects of each part of the system can be understood and regulated as required once the system reaches its point of homeostasis.

This thinking runs counter to conventional wisdom in which systems can be reduced to its individual parts and each part improved individually to improve the whole. We see this from business schools to organizations to sports teams, where emphasis is placed on maximizing each of the individual parts. This tactic leads to suboptimization, especially in complex systems (although it is true that very simple systems have the most potential for improvement by improving the parts these are the exception and not the norm as some interactions may not be observable or measureable).

I concur that systems cannot be optimized in the traditional sense but can be optimized in a systemic sense by understanding the goal of the system and allowing the system to reach equilibrium. Waiting until the system has achieved equilibrium allows for accurate measurements within the system to understand variation between the parts. A system can be optimized (but not maximized) by understanding how each part within a system interacts with each other to perform the goal of the system and how changing the performance of the parts will affect the performance of the system as a whole. This optimization is short-lived however as environmental effects upon the system and interactions within the system constantly alter its performance. Any changes to a system must subsequently be followed by observation of the system once the system reaches equilibrium so that the long-term effects of the changes can be understood.

This blog posting is a combination of some basic systems theory and my opinion. I am always open to learn more from others about how they view systems and how they can be optimized. I also hope that you got something valuable from this posting and that this blog encourages others to share their knowledge about with everyone.

Frederick (Ken) Sexe is a lifelong learner currently wrapping up his PhD in Engineering Management and Organizational Psychology at Northcentral University. His hobbies include challenging prevailing patterns of thinking that discourage new ideas while developing new ways to do things. He is currently employed as a Senior Systems Engineer at Raytheon where he is taking a career break from management to pursue his educational goals and focus on his family.

Author: Frederick (Ken) Sexe

Perception is important to engineering design because it links an individual’s observations to patterns of thought formed by previous experiences. Perception influences behavior that subsequently can influence decisions. No design can overcome a poor customer perception no matter how perfect it may seem without an understanding of how customer perceptions influence acceptance of the product. An effective way to include customer perceptions into a design is to increase interactions between engineers and the end user. Increasing engineering exposure to customers, especially during testing, can provide valuable insights as to how the product meets their needs. Traditional organization structures unfortunately remove engineers from direct customer interactions customer by placing responsibility for customer interaction with other departments. Engineers are also traditionally trained to focus on specifications in design and not on abstract variables where perceptions affect design.

Two examples illustrate how product design can influence customer perceptions. A Japanese bathroom appliance manufacturing company designed a toilet using one-fourth less water than previous toilets. Sales of the new toilet lagged as the customer perceived that the toilet was less hygienic because the water visually swirled less than traditional toilets. The engineers redesigned the toilet so that the water swirled at the same rate as the older toilets after which point sales of the toilet recovered. An American laundry soap manufacturer, when they first introduced washing powder to consumers, had very disappointing sales of the product and almost discontinued the product until they learned that consumers did not believe that it was effective because no suds formed compared to laundry soap. The company redesigned the product so that suds would appear at which point the product became highly successful.

Some companies have found success in developing methods involving customers early in product design stages as a means to not only understand how the customer will perceive the value of their product but to also find new ways to apply core technologies to customer needs. A Japanese car manufacturer once had a six-month testing period in which customers would use the new vehicle while providing recommendations to engineers. A British company entering the Indian market selling bread spread for its intended use soon realized that Indians used their product as a food additive instead. Discovering this early in the market introduction allowed the company to change the product packaging and marketing to exploit this knowledge where it has found huge success in a market previously not considered.

Many organizations unfortunately postpone consumer testing until the final design stages and in many cases during the manufacturing phase. Increasing the distance between engineering and end users combined with late consumer testing increases the possibility that negative perceptions of the product are either never identified or are identified later requiring a more costly redesign. Reducing the time between design and understanding consumer perceptions coupled with engineer training on how to interpret and apply these perceptions to a design has the potential to both increase product acceptance and reduce costly redesign as these perceptions become manifest.
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Frederick (Ken) Sexe is a lifelong learner currently wrapping up his PhD in Engineering Management and Organizational Psychology at Northcentral University. His hobbies include challenging prevailing patterns of thinking that discourage new ideas while developing new ways to do things. He is currently employed as a Senior Systems Engineer at Raytheon where he is taking a career break from management to pursue his educational goals and focus on his family.

Author: Frederick "Ken" Sexe

Systems thinking is critical to understanding how systems perform yet traditional methods of thinking often fail (or worse yet result in unintended consequences) when applied to systems. This is not intended to be a comprehensive article on systems but instead is intended to provide basic systems concepts that will hopefully provide insight for those unable to clearly understand systems. These concepts mainly derive from Russ Ackoff’s presentation to the InThinking Network on February 28, 2005 that is a valuable primer into the understanding of a system. The InThnking Network is a non-profit organization dedicated to systems thinking that has many useful resources for both novices and those expert in systems thinking.

A system can be defined loosely as two or more components of which one or more are essential parts that interact with each other to achieve a shared goal. This definition has several important factors of which all systems rely upon. The first is that a system contains one or more essential parts of which if removed the system would be unable to achieve its goal. The second is that each part within a system interacts which each other to achieve the goal of the system. It is important to understand that no essential part can by itself perform the function of the system as a whole and that the system cannot perform its function within a larger system if an essential part is removed from the system.

Essential parts have three factors that define them. Each essential part can affect the behavior or properties of the whole. Conversely, every subsystem within a larger system can affect the behavior or properties of the whole yet none of the subsystems can have an independent effect on the whole. This factor is important in that if the essential part is altered then the ability of the system to perform its function is impacted, possibly negatively. Therefore, it is possible to improve the performance of an essential part yet degrade the performance of the system.

No essential part has an independent effect on the whole; each essential part instead interacts with other essential parts as a connecting set. An example of this would be the brain within the human body in that the brain is not able to think on its own but instead relies on its interactions with other subsystems within the body to perform. Nor can a subsystem perform the function, behavior, or properties of the larger system. An example of this is the human body in which no component or subsystem within the human body can live yet all of the components and subsystems interact to perform the overall function of the human body (life).

The properties of essential parts provide several concepts important in understanding all systems. The first important concept is that the performance of a system relies on the interactions of the parts within it and not on the performance of the parts taken separately. This concept runs counter to conventional analytical thinking which attempts to gain an understanding of the whole by disassembling the parts. Analytical thinking fails to provide understanding of a system due to the fact that when a system is disassembled it no longer is able to perform it’s role; it is through a study of the interactions that true understanding of a system is gained. The second important concept is that by optimizing the parts one can inadvertently make the system worse. When parts are optimized without consideration of the interactions the ability of the other parts to interact and perform their own role relative to the function of the overall system changes. Russ Ackoff notes that you can take the best parts of all of the cars in the world and place them together and may will not even have a car; this is because each part is designed in relation to interactions with different systems and as such may not work when combined with other parts.

It is my hope that this brief article provides some basic understanding to those who are unfamiliar with how systems work. In future submissions I may focus on other system elements and characteristics; please feel free to contact me if there are any questions you may have. I also hope that others within ASEM more knowledgeable in systems than I am expand upon these so that all members could learn from their expertise.
Graphic Credit: http://www.stockvault.net/photo/116783/electronics-lab

Frederick (Ken) Sexe is a lifelong learner currently wrapping up his PhD in Engineering Management and Organizational Psychology at Northcentral University. His hobbies include challenging prevailing patterns of thinking that discourage new ideas while developing new ways to do things. He is currently employed as a Senior Systems Engineer at Raytheon where he is taking a career break from management to pursue his educational goals and focus on his family.

Author: Gene Dixon, ASEM President

In the quiet mornings — I really do get to the office before anyone else — I start with a review of the paper. I’m looking for course content. Today, I found this:

This was under the heading “Where are people spending too much — and not enough?” that started off discussing the categories of biggest waste in the family budget (grocery shopping and dining out). Jenkins wonders why with all the cooking shows on cable that we are so prone to dining out.

I read the article looking for course content for the next time I teach Engineering Economy. I’m always looking for ways to personalize lessons on the time value of money. I credit Ted Eschenbach with that.

I’ve been calling for growth, value and retention on the society level. You’ve responded. Our numbers are up. Former ASEM President Rod Grubb has taken growth, value and retention so seriously, he’s issued a personal challenge to several of us to ask people to join ASEM. I’ve asked 200 so far.

But that article made me stop for a moment. I thought about course content dealing with life-long learning, investing in your career for technical competence, and saving for retirement (not really understood by undergrads, but I try). And then I thought, “Here is a succinct statement about growth, value and retention on a personal level that should be reflected in ASEM’s products and services that we offer to the field of engineering management. My daughter would say “DUH!” You have to know her to appreciate the candor.

We can talk about tools, techniques and methods within all of ASEM products and services. We can sing praises of their goodness and the need for their practice. We can tell ourselves how important our work is as the voice of engineering management across the globe. We would be right.

And we would be wrong. Wrong? It’s wrong because it is not personal. It’s the old WIIFM game. And what is in it for you? For our customers? For engineering managers? Really it is practitioner support. Our products and services are practitioner support. The research of our academics — students and faculty — is about practitioner support. EMJ is, in the end, practitioner support. More than that, we have to share, learn, and develop on a personal level. Really, each ASEM member is making a personal investment in personal value. For themselves to begin with. And that growth in personal value is a contribution to the growth of the engineering management discipline.

ASEM - building personal value, personal growth and personal retention. For ourselves. For engineering managers. For ASEM. What do you think? Can you make it personal?

Thank you for your personal contribution to engineering management.
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Author: Frederick "Ken: Sexe

A recent article adding to the many about the brilliance of Steve Jobs noted that creativity requires several things lacking in some industries. Creativity, this article reminds us, requires diverse experience and a curiosity to explore new things coupled with an ability to synthesize new ideas. Why is experience and curiosity so important in creativity? And, more importantly, why do most organizations find it hard to foster these abilities?

Imagine a barren wasteland devoid of any vegetation. Over time rain falls upon this landscape creating rivers and valleys. Over time this rain continues to fall creating areas with valleys deeper than other areas. This image is similar to how Edward deBono visualized how the mind works. The rain in this example is stimulus applied to a landscape representing the patterns of thought an individual has. One’s experiences continues to create a landscape in which stimulus prefers deeper patterns than others.

These patterns of thought have advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is that we are able to recall complex patterns from memory very quickly. These patterns unfortunately can work to our disadvantage by biasing us into certain patterns of thought over others. Individuals with a diverse set of experiences have in essence more patterns that are shallower than those of an individual with a limited set of experiences and much deeper patterns of thought. These patterns are also asymmetrical in nature; a good example of this is saying your ABC’s forwards and backwards. It is much easier to say your ABC’s going forward than backward as these actions actually use two different patterns rather than the same pattern forwards and backwards.

Creativity comes when an individual is able to move from one pattern of thought to another. This results in a dominant pattern benefiting from the thinking that created another pattern. Steve Jobs benefited from his ability to apply a dominant pattern of thinking to patterns he had created with other experiences he had. Curiosity and synthesis, the other two factors Steve Jobs noted was important in creativity, encourages an individual to explore different patterns of thinking and applying these patterns to other dominant patterns to create new ideas.

Organizations can inadvertently limit their ability to develop creativity in several ways. One critical factor occurs in the hiring process with HR and hiring managers focusing solely on requirements found in the job description. Many organizations compound this problem by not providing training on how to interview candidates for their level of potential creativity among other things. Another critical factor is policies that discourage risk taking such as goals and financial controls that discourage collaboration and risk taking across functions that could provide new ideas spawning creative new ideas. Organizations within a particular industry also tend to hire within the industry thereby limiting the availability of individuals from outside their industry that can provide creative new insights.

There are obviously more factors to creativity and subsequent innovation than the ones included in this blog. There are also those within ASEM much more knowledgeable in creativity and innovation theory than I am. I sincerely hope that this blogs spurs some thinking that could be of value and introduce new ideas to our fellow ASEM members.
Graphic Credit: http://pixabay.com/en/rays-thoughts-construct-does-face-516326/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Frederick (Ken) Sexe is a lifelong learner currently wrapping up his PhD in Engineering Management and Organizational Psychology at Northcentral University. His hobbies include challenging prevailing patterns of thinking that discourage new ideas while developing new ways to do things. He is currently employed as a Senior Systems Engineer at Raytheon where he is taking a career break from management to pursue his educational goals and focus on his family.