Objective-driven Engineering, Research, & Management.
Phil
I got going on what I call Objective-driven Engineering when students
at Stanford U. gave a summary on winning their 'paper bicycle' design
problem. Their design was the best, it won the race too. Why? From
the start, these students came up with an objective; to win the race no
matter what the grade! With this objective in hand things for their
design just fell into place. Simple.
How many computer simulations are run today? Add on an objective
(function) and simulation problem would be re-cast as optimization
problem. Problems would be solved with optimal solutions and in just a
run or two. But this does not happen, why?
How many airplanes take-off each day -without- a destination? How many
people drive their car -without- a destination? How many companies
build complex 'black boxes' -without- a true target market?
Somebody has the objective but is not sharing it with other team
members. Lets start sharing our team goals/objectives and build some
great teams.
Here is the Stanford 'paper bicycle' problem ...
A class in Mechanical Engineering requires its students to design a
'Paper Bicycle'. A students grade is dependent on their bicycles
lap time of a course, total weight, and a penalty when their non-paper
parts weight is more than 10% of their total weight. The lower the
score the better for ones grade!
What would be the design objective given each 3 member team has (a time
constraint of) 2 weeks to build a team, design, test, and race their
'paper bicycle'?
Win the race.
Thanks for reading,
Phil Brubaker
Mathematican