Professor Edward A. Pohl
Head of the Industrial Engineering Department
University of Arkansas
Date: Friday, Sept. 13, 2019
Time: 1 - 1:50 pm
Location: SEC 105
Abstract: System Engineers perform Tradespace Exploration (TSE) in early system design to identify affordable system concepts that can meet stakeholder requirements. For complex systems, TSE is challenging due to uncertainties in the future mission(s), environments, threats, technologies, and requirements. Typically, systems engineers have identified and evaluated “promising” point based designs that span the system concept and design space. Selecting the “best” point design has led to cost growth, schedule slips, and sometimes program cancellation as the uncertainties are resolved. We propose an alternative, called Set-Based Design, to identify the most promising sets to continue into design and eliminate sets as information becomes available to reduce the uncertainties. This presentation uses Probability Management© with an integrated trade-off analytics framework with Model-Based Engineering to explore 100,000 potential system design concepts and architectures in near real-time. We demonstrate TSE with SBD with an Army Unmanned Aerial Vehicle case study to identify design sets, assess design feasibility, evaluate concepts (for both value and cost), and assess requirements by displaying sets with common design choices. TSE with SBD can inform future systems requirements and help systems decision makers select the most promising sets for development.
Biography: Edward Pohl is a Professor and Head of the IE Department, and holder of the 21st Century Professorship at U. Arkansas. He has participated and led, risk, reliability, supply chain and systems engineering related research efforts at U. Arkansas. Before coming to Arkansas, Ed spent twenty-one years in the U.S. Air Force where he served in a variety of engineering, operations analysis and academic positions. Ed received his Ph.D. in SIE and M.S. in Reliability Engineering from U. Arizona. He holds a M.S. in SE from the Air Force Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Engineering Management from U. Dayton, and a B.S. in ECE from Boston University. Ed is the Co-Editor of the J. Engineering Management, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transaction on Reliability, the J. Risk and Reliability, J.Quality Technology and Quantitative Management, and the J. Military Operations Research, on the Editorial Board of the IEEE Transaction on Technology and Engineering Management, and Systems. Ed is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), a Fellow of the Society of Reliability Engineers (SRE), a Fellow of the American Society of Engineering Management (ASEM), a Senior Member of IEEE and ASQ, a member of INCOSE, INFORMS, ASEE and MORS.