My interest in space started as a kid; as a "nerd," I loved the "Star Trek" series and imagined myself in space. I even participated in Comic-Con events by cosplaying my favorite characters. So, it was no surprise that before joining the Aras team, I…

Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Rik Rasor, Head of CoE Artificial Intelligence at Fraunhofer-Institute for Mechatronic Systems Design, and Ruslan Bernijazov, Co-CEO at AI Marketplace & Systems, Engineering Lead at Heinz Nixdorf Institute…

Product variability is one of the key strategies used by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and companies that offer configure-to-order products. This helps to decrease costs, minimize Cost of Quality (CoQ), accelerate time-to-market, and quickly…

Systems Thinking is about maintaining a gestalt view of the design that then gets successively broken down into individual contributing elements. You know—seeing the forest AND the trees as one and the same. But, what if some “trees” are not explicitly…

2020 certainly has been a bizarre year. It seems so long ago I was in San Diego and Washington, DC working with prospects and subscribers. Next thing I know, I’m at home being a part-time teacher. My wife and I are fortunate to be in a situation where…

Now that 2020 is finally nearing its end, it appears as if most of us (my unscientific guess) can’t wait for it to just go away. This is because it was so exhaustingly unpredictable and demanding. But discussing that is likely not very productive, so…

The ability to maintain a system’s architecture as a single source of truth unifying all of its related engineering domains—requirements, simulation, mechanical, electronic and software— is critical to the development of complex products. This was the…

The thing about trends is: they are always evolving. So, the ability to keep up is a two-fold challenge: how well-positioned was your company for the last set of trends, and how flexibly can you adapt to the next set? Design World recently evaluated…

Modern , high-tech products rely on systems engineering to realize designs that fully integrate software, mechanical, electrical, and electronic components. But despite how important they are to the product lifecycle, processes for system s modeling,…

I just came back from the INCOSE IS2019 conference and I’m eager to report that the view I expressed in my recent blog on systems engineering was also addressed by David Long of Vitech (congratulations on becoming the latest INCOSE fellow!) in his MBSE…

Last year of college. One of the last engineering classes, machine Design 412. The final design was debated and brainstormed by the class itself, finally deciding the test would be to transport a playing card up 5 stair steps and then stop. Few rules…

Product complexity was the elephant in the room in 2017 as companies across Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, and Industrial Manufacturing looked to differentiate their offerings and create disruptive business models. These challenges exposed significant…

A while back I wrote a post about how manufacturing process planning is part of the Business of Engineering .  I feel it is equally important to include Systems Engineering in BoE as well. Here is the problem with many businesses - their development processes…

The days of products being designed using the “over the wall” process is dead. Today’s products REQUIRE a systems based approach. Full stop. Everything we touch today is a system of systems. The smartphone, electric car, turbine engine, and IoT enabled…

Is IoT the next Game Changer? The next big hype? Or is it just a good business practice that engineering driven companies like EMC were already doing 20 years ago. Hype cycles can be very compelling. And so is the CEO yelling in your ear “Why don’t…

"Those annoying 'Update Required' pop-ups on your smartphone and computer will soon be in your car too," says CNN Money . It's all part of the connected car, and it's coming faster than you think. Cars are already high-tech devices. Dozens of microprocessors…

Like a lot of people in our industry, at this time of year I have one eye on my various news feeds to see what is coming out of CES, the Consumer Electronics Show. The latest thing to catch my eye is the iOS-Compatible LEGO MINDSTORM EV3. According…

As technology advances, so does the complexity of the products it produces. In the 1970s, a typically luxury car had around 2,000 parts in it and most were mechanical. Today, there are more than 30,000 parts in the average car and they are blend of mechanical…