SEMINAR: Pulling Back the Curtain: Managing Product Variety and Navigating Uncertain Futures

Abstract

Engineers make system architecture and product configuration decisions while working in situations that are often poorly understood. The ramifications of such decisions are non-trivial – new product launches are infrequent, resources often cannot be reallocated, and predicting all possible future scenarios is impossible. This talk will highlight our recent efforts in helping engineers understand ‘what is going on here?’ when designing consumer products for heterogenous markets and engineered systems that operate for many years in a constantly changing world. As part of this presentation, we will discuss model choice ramifications when representing customer preference, the challenges of managing product commonality when creating a product mix, and how optimization algorithms can be improved for market-driven design problems. We will also discuss how the incorporation of strategic inefficiencies, in the form of excess and margins, increase a system’s total lifetime value by reducing sensitivity to requirement changes and truncating change propagation. Future directions of design research will also be introduced.

Bio

Scott Ferguson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at NC State University. His research program answers questions about product variety and system architecture decisions by modeling market-driven environments and considering uncertain and/or conflicting future requirements. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award (2011), the NC State Outstanding Teacher Award (2012), the ASME Design Automation Young Investigator Award (2014), and the ASEE New Mechanical Engineering Educator Award (2015). He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Mechanical Design, is a member of the ASME Design Engineering Division Executive Committee, and is the past chair of the ASME Design Automation Conference Executive Committee. Dr. Ferguson has received funding from NSF, NASA, DOE, the American Public Power Association, General Motors, Under Armour, and other private industry.

Scott Ferguson Associate Professor with MAE

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https://ncsu.zoom.us/j/96661228399?pwd=QnYveHk0N0ZjeXV4Z3JBSFF0QTUrQT09

Meeting ID: 966 6122 8399
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