Predicting and managing system interactions at early phase of the product development process

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-293).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.The activity of designing and developing large, complex, discrete, physical, and engineered products faces the challenges in the physical product system, the organization of people, and the larger systems in which the product resides-the natural and societal systems. This thesis defines system interactions as the interactions amongst design variables within the physical product. Knowing system interactions early in the product development process is critical for project management, design concept selection, and system architecture decisions. However, existing methods that address the system interactions issues, such as the Design Structure Matrix (DSM), are good analysis tools, but cannot be used during conceptual synthesis when the most important decisions about the system designs are made. System level knowledge is defined as the knowledge concerning system interactions. System level knowledge is organizational knowledge that resides in the collective minds of members in the organization. System level knowledge is critical to the success of the design of large systems, yet is often missing due to its empirical nature. A knowledge management framework was proposed in this thesis and tested in industry cases from Ford and CVC. This thesis developed a method to predict and analyze system interactions at early phase of the design process. The method transforms an Axiomatic Design's Design Matrix (DM) into a DSM based on solving systems of linear equations using substitution. Since a DM is more easily constructed during early design phases, we can use this method to obtain a DSM during concept design.Consequently, the advantages of the DSM system analysis tools and methods can be applied to make better decisions on system design, system architecture, and project management. The method was tested using two industry cases at CVC and Johnson and Johnson Ortho-clinical Diagnostics. Both case studies showed that the method was effective in real engineering projects. Further observations in the case studies also revealed that a DSM could also be easily converted back into a DM. The interchangeability between DSM and DM allows engineering organizations to predict system interactions early on in a project, while capturing and managing system level knowledge throughout the product lifecycle.by Qi Dong.Ph.D

Strong cooperativeness and family reproductive ecology : an overview of the communitarian life among Totonacas from Mexico

Young Kgoyomes (Indigenous Totonacas from the rural highlands of Huehuetla district in Mexico) were asked to state their principal moral values. The following 4 concepts in order represent 84% of their choices: (a) life, (b) close relatives, (c) money, and (d) health. The remaining 16% spread across 18 different concepts. At the level of intersexual dyads, the characteristics both sexes found most attractive in the other were: a) being a hard worker, (b) faithfulness, (c) prettiness/handsomeness, and (d) good-heartedness. These represented 58.7 % of men's preferences and 55.8 %> of women's in a prospective partner, with the remaining percentages split across 18 different characteristics. Such an affinity between the sexes has probably facilitated the "assortative" selection of a partner, producing marriages which are highly monogamous and harmonised for hard work. Another example of 'pro-social sentiment' is the precocious age at which they start to 'help at the nest', i.e. from 5 years old onwards, and by the age of 10, 58.4 % are already engaged in a variety of tasks for helping the family

Decentralizing the provision of public services in Bolivia: institutions, political competition and the effectiveness of local government

This dissertation comprises a close analysis of decentralization in Bolivia, employing a methodology that marries qualitative and quantitative techniques. It first examines the effects of decentralization on public-sector investment and the provision of public services in Bolivia using a unique database that includes measures of municipalities' social and institutional characteristics and information on its policy-making processes. I find that decentralization changed both the sectoral uses of public resources and their geographic distribution significantly by increasing government sensitivity to local needs in human capital investment and the provision of basic services. I then investigate the determinants of central and local government investment respectively in order to investigate why the shift in regime produced such large changes in investment patterns. I then turn to a much deeper examination of local government via nine case studies, selected to broadly represent Bolivia's national diversity. I begin with an account of the workings of local government in the best and worst of these, analyzing the character and interactions of the major societal actors. I locate fundamental causes of good and bad government in the economic structure of a district as it relates to the political party system, and the cohesiveness and organizational capacity of its civil society. These ideas are used to build a conceptual model of the local government process in which the interactions of political, economic and civic actors reveal information and enforce accountability. I show how imbalances between them can cripple accountability and distort the policy-making process. Lastly, the dissertation tests the model by examining government performance in seven additional municipalities. I show that the framework can explain the emergence of good or bad government institutions, and thus the quality of government a district ultimately receives, through the interactions of key players —notably civic organizations — deep in the local political economy

1998-1999 Louisiana Tech University Catalog

The Louisiana Tech University Catalog includes announcements and course descriptions for courses offered at Louisiana Tech University for the academic year of 1998-1999.https://digitalcommons.latech.edu/university-catalogs/1016/thumbnail.jp

Indic Manuscript Cultures through the Ages

Stemming from the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project that ran in Cambridge (UK) in 2011-2014 and led to the cataloguing and partial digitization of the rich collections of South Asian manuscripts in the University Library, these essays explore the manuscript culture of India and beyond – Nepal, Cambodia, Tibet – from a variety of angles: books as artefacts, works of art, commodities, staples of tradition, and of course as repositories of knowledge

Thank you,

Public Comment on Kettleman City dump expansion Petition to stop Kettleman Hills expansion.xls Wayne, Attached is a list of people who signed our online petition opposing the expansion of the Chem Waste Kettleman Hills hazardous waste dump, with additional comments. We are submitting this as part of the public comment period for the permit. The petition was prefaced with a video and this language: "Kettleman City is a rural, majority Latino and farmworker community halfruay between Los Angeles and San Franoisco. It is home to the largest hazardous waste dump this side of the Mississippi and to shockingly high rates of childhood cancer, birth defects and miscarriages- two facts residents believe to be connected. Now the dump is looking to double in size and the agency responsible for approving the expansion- the Department of Toxic Substances Control- is letting it happen. We have until October 25th to stop this.Sign the petition to demand the Dept. of Toxic Substances Control stop the dump from expanding!&quot

Indic Manuscript Cultures through the Ages

Stemming from the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project that ran in Cambridge (UK) in 2011-2014 and led to the cataloguing and partial digitization of the rich collections of South Asian manuscripts in the University Library, these essays explore the manuscript culture of India and beyond – Nepal, Cambodia, Tibet – from a variety of angles: books as artefacts, works of art, commodities, staples of tradition, and of course as repositories of knowledge

Towards environmental historical national accounts for oil producers: methodological considerations and estimates for Venezuela and Mexico over the 20th century

Environmental accounting literature reminds us that prosperity can be ephemeral if it is built on depletion of natural resources. Traditional national accounting practice ignores the loss of natural resources. According to standard environmental accounting, this produces exaggerated income, encourages unsustainable levels of consumption and is misleading when assessing the economic prospects of resource extracting countries. While the historiography of oil-extracting countries departs from entirely different concepts and methods, it contains plenty of arguments that resemble those of the environmental accountants. This thesis shows how Mexican and Venezuelan scholars have discussed the concept of national wealth, the ephemeral prosperity delivered by oil depletion and the biases that oil cash introduced in the perceptions of their countries' economic performance. Nonetheless the arguments in the historiography lack quantitative support for the most part. The dissertation connects these previously disparate literatures and explores the resulting synergies. A priori, it seems that environmental accounting provides the tools for quantifying the hitherto qualitative observations of the historiography of two countries with very different strategies regarding the depletion of their natural resources. While Mexico approximates very closely the theoretical case of a closed economy, Venezuela has been considered the textbook example of a resource-export-driven economy. In the end, history proves to be an excellent laboratory for an ex-post analysis of the concepts, models and methods of environmental accounting. This study contributes to the surprisingly small amount of comparative historical studies of the oil industries and the economic histories of Venezuela and Mexico. The most important conclusion derived from the comparative analysis of the theoretical models of environmental accounting is that the competing methods available in the literature seem to apply to different scenarios. Furthermore, the results of the thesis show that the role of technological change in sustaining the historical levels of consumption is substantial since the terms of trade did not improve in the continuous way needed to rescue economies from declining levels of consumption. This is an important finding because gains from trade have now been included in some environmental accounting models but technological change is left out. Overall, the thesis is an examination of the tractability and usefulness of environmental accounting as a tool of economic analysis over the long run