Home Meetings Archives (Reverse Chronological Order)

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2007 Holiday Networking Social Meeting
Diamond Jim Brady's Bistro
Novi
Tuesday, December 4, 2007 6:30PM-9PM

Gather at 6:30pm for drinks and informal snacks or dinner with the chapter members and officers. Discuss the speaker agenda for next year and our plans for the following 2008 events: Joint meeting with Women-In-Engineering affinity group (February 2008). IEEE EMC Conference (August 17-22, 2008); the IEEE exhibit booth at Convergence 2008 (October 20-22, 2008).

Registration is online Registration is requested, but not necessary. Separate checks. Location is: Brady's

See the meeting announcement page for complete details of this event.

Clinical Engineering is a relatively new field dedicated to the proper use of medical technology in the health care environment. Clinical engineers work in industry, academia, and consulting, but are most often found in larger medical centers and academic hospitals. The Veterans Administration employees the largest number of clinical engineers, with virtually all secondary and tertiary care facilities employing clinical engineers. The technology management of the medical environment encompasses not only the acquisition and disposition of various items, but also effective and efficient use through successful application of technology to a given clinical situation. The safety of patients is a paramount concern, while the realities of modern medicine often dictate the range of solutions available to clinical engineers. The dividing line between information technology, which is not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and medical technology, which is regulated by the FDA, is increasingly blurred in today's healthcare facility. A general overview of clinical engineering and the difficulties faced in today's healthcare environment will be the major focus of the presentation and discussion.

8 November 2007 Fall Section Conference Keynote
Speaker: Prof. Stephen R. Forrest, Vice President for Research
Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Physics
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
IEEE Fellow

Topic: "Electronics on plastic: A solution to the energy challenge, or a pipe dream?"

For over 50 years, conjugated organic compounds have been recognized as an important class of electronic semiconductor materials, with potential application to light emission and detection. Very recently, these materials have been shown to generate extremely high efficient white light, and can also have high detection efficiencies. Due to their very low cost and low deposition temperatures, this suggests that organic thin film semiconductor light emitting diodes and solar cells may present a practical solution to mankind's greatest challenge: the use and generation of low cost renewable, and largely pollution free energy. In this talk, I will address both the reality and fantasy of this suggestion. While organic thin film devices can have extremely high performance, they also suffer from shorter operational lifetime than conventional semiconductor (e.g. silicon) devices. And, although their low cost has yet to be proven in large scale manufacturing environments, the potentially unlimited promise of this materials class is driving a substantial global research effort to determine their ultimate applicability to meeting our energy challenges

Under the leadership of Bill Gates, Microsoft has become one of the most profitable companies in the history of the world. There are many keystones to Microsoft's continuing lock-in as a convicted (yet untrammeled) monopolist in the personal-computer software market. One of the most important of these keystones, and one which is a matter of personal experience for many of us, is their control over access to the information we store in digital documents. Microsoft Word, by default, stores documents in a proprietary format which can only be read reliably by other copies of the same version of Word. Therefore, almost everyone who works in any kind of office needs to purchase an up-to-date copy of Microsoft Word in order to be able to access these documents.

Recently, two powerful communities have joined to promote an alternative digital document format known as Open Document Format (ODF), which is a published open standard, free for any programmer to implement. The first and largest of these communities is all those who don't wish to pay Microsoft's monopoly-inflated prices. The Chinese government, on behalf of the Chinese business community, is a notable member of this group. The second such community is government archivists, who have a statutory responsibility to maintain collections of documents for public access over decades. This group is smaller than the first, but their voices are heard by lawmakers. They also find the default Microsoft document format unacceptable. Imperfect conversions to new formats can change the documents in unpredictable ways, and maintaining computers running older versions of Word is neither practical nor legal. In many countries, arranging a government archive in such a way that citizens are required to make a purchase from Microsoft before viewing public records is highly objectionable, not to mention illegal. More objectionable yet is the concept of the citizens of a sovereign government being unable to view their own government's electronic documents without licensing software patents held by Microsoft, a foreign corporation.

The seminar will present some technical background on ODF, as well as OOXML, Microsoft's response to ODF. The current status of these formats with regards to international standard-setting bodies such as ISO will be described. The political environment surrounding government decisions to adopt ODF will be reviewed, with particular attention to recent developments in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the People's Republic of China.

Presented jointly by IEEE Engineering Management Society, IEEE EMC Society, IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, IEEE Computer Society.

Many of us have been laughing at Dilbert cartoon sketches for years. Thanks to the creative genius of Scott Adams, many sketches have us laughing on the floor. Our bosses get lampooned as ignorant, irresponsible and just plain crude. But wait a minute! Every one of us is managing. We manage people, projects and money, or we manage all three. Is there just a tiny bit of Dilbert's pointy-haired boss inside each of us? Where does your IEEE Engineering Management Society fit into this scenario? How can EMS publications, meetings and workshops actually help you? Do you really want help? Popular authors, like Richard N. Bolles have been writing about job issues for years. Bolles gives ideas for job change in What Color Is Your Parachute? John Crystal and Bolles co-authored Where Do I Go From Here with the Rest of My Life?, the result of an IEEE contract to help engineers and others make career decisions. Popular speakers, like Barry Flicker have conducted EMS hands-on workshops to help people define engineering management issues and develop a plan to deal with those issues. Join us for some constructive fun looking at recent Dilbert issues and results.

29 March 2007 Spring Section Conference Speaker: Russell Harrison
IEEE-USA Legislative Representative

Mr. Harrison is a staff member at IEEE-USA in Washington, D.C. More precisely, he is one of your lobbyists in Washington, helping to represent the views and concerns of IEEE members to Congress and the Federal government.

Among other things, one of his jobs at IEEE-USA is to visit local IEEE sections to discuss Congress and public policy. In the past three years he has visited almost 60 sections in 28 states. However, our state was not among them. Now he will be coming to Michigan.

His talks usually focus on what IEEE-USA is, issues it is currently working on in Congress and what individual IEEE members can do to help. I can also focus my discussion on a particular public policy issue, if there is something that your members are especially concerned about. For example, last year I gave a talk on the Energy Bill and several on offshore outsourcing. My goal is to inform members about their advocacy efforts in Washington and to give them a few tools for influencing government on their own.

Read about Mr. Harrison's interview in April 2006 IEEE Today's Engineer IEEE Members Meet With Rep. Tom DeLay

29 March 2007 Spring Section Conference Keynote Speaker: Teresa (Teri) M. Takai
Topic: "Technology and Michigan: Re-Engineering Government"

Director of the Michigan Department of Information Technology (MDIT)
Chief Information Officer (CIO), State of Michigan

Teri Takai, Michigan Chief Information Officer and Director of the Department of Information Technology, examines the increasingly dominant role of technology in state government and how technology is emerging as a key partner in all state operations. From citizen services to department operations and economic development, Takai explores how technology in government is impacting life in Michigan every day.

See the meeting announcement page for complete details of this event.

Mr. Ben Tabatowski-Bush has been working on Alternative Powered Vehicle Electronics since 1992. His achievements include the creation of the Battery Controller for the Ford Electric Ranger program, the electronic architecture for upcoming Ford Hybrid battery systems, and numerous alternative vehicle powertrain systems such as 42V and 12V Integrated Started Alternator and 300V Traction Inverter.

Although technically this talk is sponsorted by the APEA and by IEEE Vehicle Technology Society Chapter and not our Chapter, we did help to get the speaker and we are helping to organize this event.

See the meeting announcement page for complete details of this event. Cost s $30. Registration information is at the APEA web site.

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2006 Holiday Networking Social Meeting
Diamond Jim Brady's Bistro
Novi
Tuesday, December 5, 2006 6PM-9PM

We had a wonderful holiday party at Brady's. We briefly discussed the "Collaboration" article in the Third-Quarter IEEE Engineering Management Review. We also discussed our suggestions for speakers and topics for next year's events. Jim provided a good suggestion that we concentrate on "take-aways" for the workshops, that is: What knowledge or tools does one get for attending.

See the meeting announcement page for complete details of this event.

Conference Keynote Speaker: John Ford, Electronics Engineering Division Manager
Topic: The World's Largest Fully Steerable Single Aperture Radio Telescope

John Ford from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Green Bank, West Virginia will be our keynote speaker during dinner. Members can find the presentation on the Section Online Community .

See the meeting announcement page for complete details of this event.

Speaker: Don Bramlett, P.E.
Topic: IEEE Leadership Skills Workshop

Don will present the IEEE Leadership Skills Workshop to us on Saturday, July 29 9am-2pm.

The Leadership Skills workshop is intended to help prepare participants in interpersonal, group, team and leadership skills. The workshop is targeted to those in management or leadership roles in business, industry, academia or volunteer activities. However, anyone interested in further developing these skills in dealing with people and working within any type of organization will benefit from the workshop.

Topic: "Career Survival for Engineers and Scientists in the 21st Century"
Provided by: IEEE-USA Career & Workforce Policy Committee (CWPC)

This workshop was put on by the Section. Officers from our chapter helped organize the event.

The workshop material is available to members. Contact Mark Ciechanowski for more information.

Speaker: Steven W. Baker, DTE Energy
Topic: "A Principle-Based Approach to Agile Solution Delivery".

As he describes it: Agile methodologies have emerged to become a prevailing discipline in Software Engineering. Many strive to “go agile” by selecting a few agile techniques and piloting them on a project. This “a la carte” approach often leads to measurable benefits. A top-down or “principle-based” approach to embracing these techniques provides a foundation for meaningful, sustainable agile solution delivery.

Steven W. Baker is a software methodologist at DTE Energy. Leveraging his extensive background in both agile and traditional solution delivery methodologies, he leads and enables the brewing of DTE Energy’s “house blend” of agile and adaptive methods. Steve recently presented at the Agile 2005 Conference.

Conference Keynote Speaker: John Miller, Ph.D., P.E., IEEE Fellow and
Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Power Electronics Society
Topic: "Evolution of Hybrid Vehicles, Architectures, and Energy Storage Systems"

Hybrid electric vehicles were first developed in 1894 but disappeared from the automotive scene as the power capability of the internal combustion engine improved. A century later the hybrid re-emerged and was again offered to the motoring public by visionary companies that saw hybrids as the bridge to a future hydrogen economy in the face of a looming oil gap.

Dr. Miller is Vice President Advanced Transportation Applications at Maxwell Technologies and a strong advocate of introducing ultracpacitors into truck and bus, automotive, industrial utility vehicle, and utility voltage support applications. Dr Miller is Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Power Electronics Society Newsletter.

Our Chapter Chair gave a talk to the IEEE Student Branch at the University of Michigan-Dearborn on Six Sigma Principles. The material came from his experience teaching Six Sigma Green Belts at Ford. He introduced the students to common cause and special cause variation, and common cause and special cause solutions.

Speaker: Marty Biancalana
Topic: Change or Die

The article titled "Change or Die" appeared in the Third Quarter 2005 edition of the IEEE Engineering Management Review (http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/ems/emr/emronline.html). It asks:

"Change or Die. What if you were given that choice? For real. Could you change when change really mattered?"

This was the topic of our discussion at our February meeting. Marty Biancalana, Chapter Vice Chair and Manager at General Dynamics in Ann Arbor, was our presenter and discussion lead. Changing business process performance depends on changing the behavior of people. The author argues that change is best accomplished in a single, radical, all-at-once program rather than by a series of small incremental changes. The evidence of this comes from results of heart attack patient and by-pass patient recovery. We discussed the article and what the author recommends for effective management of business change. Marty described how this style is similar to the military boot camp process of changing a recruit into a productive graduate. They run the program of "slob in --> marine out".
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December 2005 Meeting

For our December meeting, we decided to forgo our regular format and join with the Engineering Society of Detroit (http://www.esd.org) at their "Holiday Networking Event and Fundraiser" to benefit the Michigan Regional Future City Competition. The event was held at the Park West Gallery in Southfield. The wine, hors d'oeuvres, and the art made an enjoyable background for the evening conversation. Several hundred engineers attended, and I personally saw at least five chapter members at this festive gathering. Several of the chapter officers took the opportunity to discuss plans for chapter meetings for next year. Since our local IEEE Southeastern Michigan Section is one of the seventy-five Affiliate Council societies, all IEEE members were invited to attend, at the Affiliate Council discount price. It was nice to talk with colleagues I have not seen in a while and see so many fellow engineers from other engineering disciplines.

Speaker: Dr. Eugene Greenstein
Topic: Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)

Dr. Euge Greenstein was our speaker at the Fall Section Conference. He generated much discussion with his talk on Product Lifecycle Management entitled "PLM Tools are Necessary but not Sufficient". The group of ten members stayed for half an hour after the presentation to ask additional questions of Dr. Greenstien about PLM.

Conference Keynote Speaker: Jack Casazza, President American Education Institute
Topic: IMPACT OF POWER INDUSTRY RESTRUCTURING ON POWER SYSTEM PLANNING, OPERATION AND ECONOMICS

The effects of power industry restructuring on electric consumers will be covered through a review of its impact on the electric engineering profession. Throughout the talk the emphasis will be on the role of engineers in determining the reliability and cost of electricity. The talk will cover: changes in industry structure; changes in focus from coordination to competition; expenditure reductions to improve profits; changes in technical qualifications for government officials and industry managers; failure to pass on technical knowledge and shortages of technically trained personnel; need for additional study and new technology. The contribution of restructuring to the Blackout of August 14, 2003 will also be discussed based on the investigations of the US and Canadian governments taking place this summer in which Mr. Casazza is participating. It will include his recommendations for the future.

See Euge's management reading list.

Speaker: Liang Downey
Topic: EMS 2005 Workshop

At our chapter's third meeting of the year on August 30th, Liang Downey reported her trip to the EMS 2005 Chapter Chairs Workshop in Quebec City. Ten members viewed a first-hand account of all of the presentations.

Liang also presented an introduction to the new book "The 8th Habit" by Stephen Covey.

Speaker: Dennis Siemiet
Topic: Core Values, Part II

Dennis Siemiet continued his talk in April about personal values and corporate values.

The compatibility of the employee’s core values with the company core values is critical to the performance of the company and the well-being of the employee.

Speaker: Dennis Siemiet
Topic: Core Values

Biography: Dennis Siemiet is an engineering manager with over 30 years of experience in automotive and defense industries. In management and team leadership roles, Dennis has built cohesive technical teams under challenging and difficult conditions. Some examples included developing of an advanced 55 ton tracked vehicle with a 1-megawatt electric drive, networked subsystems, and 3- power bussed (24vdc automotive bus, 270vdc for high power system and an 800 volt propulsion bus). Dennis presented the findings at the First International Conference on All Electric Combat Vehicles (AECV). Defined the business plan and setting up a productive automotive harness prototyping division. System engineering team for an innovative multi-processor controlled 4-axes stabilized antenna subsystem for ground and weather mapping radar system.

Conference Keynote Speaker: Prof. Tony England, College of Engineering, University of Michigan
Topic: THE OPPORTUNITY COST OF THE NEW NASA

The ‘New NASA’ is about a lunar base and the human exploration of Mars. While the likely dollar cost of these programs will be truly astronomical, certainly exceeding $300B in today’s dollars, the opportunity cost of denied NASA investments in global-scale climate science and in marketable aerospace technologies might be the greater cost to the Nation. As a retired astronaut who experienced the Apollo, Space Shuttle, and early International Space Station programs, I will review the evolution NASA’s programs, speculate about why we have the ‘New NASA’, explain its opportunity cost, and propose an alternative that would better use our national resources as well as lead to human visits to Mars.
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10 November 2004 Fall Section Meeting

Speaker: Chris Wiggins.
Topic: "Contract Requirements and Engineering Managers"

The primary source of problems with contracts for IT or IT services is that the contracts do not express the requirements. Frequently, lawyers and contract negotiators do not have the knowledge to fill this gap. To prevent problems, users of the IT or IT services should assemble their requirements and have them included in the contract. Some best practices for IT contracts and 'contracts that work' will be identified.

Chris Wiggins has almost thirty years of experience in the IT industry in technical, business, and legal roles. Starting as a programmer, he has been an analyst, project leader, an enterprise technical leader for software development and client-servant training, the technical lead on the first consistent office environment for a Fortune 10 company, technical lead for EDS's advanced research lab in Ann Arbor, troubleshooter for major projects in trouble, infrastructure architect for a GM business unit, CTO for an EDS division, negotiator and technical lead for a global support agreement and strategic alliance between EDS and Microsoft, CTO of a dot com (bust), and contract negotiator for agreements with Fortune 10 companies, representing both the buyer and the seller at different times. Currently he is an independent contractor.

Speaker: Marc F. Malooley, Attorney at Brooks Kushman, P.C. in Southfield
Topic: Intellectual Property and the Engineering Manager

Synopsis: Marc presented a brief overview of various types of intellectual property and their legal bases, and in particular, he discussed how intellectual property relates to the engineering manager: what to do, and what not to do, to protect your intellectual property. There was quite a lively discussion concerning the value of various forms of intellectual property as well as practical ways to recognize, protect, and preserve the value of the intellectual property.

Marc F. Malooley is a Registered Patent Attorney and Licensed Professional Engineer. He has ten years of engineering experience and has held positions as Director of Engineering, and as Director of Quality Assurance for a tier-one automotive manufacturer and a medical device manufacturer.

Speaker: Jim Morgenstern
Topic: Maximizing Human Capital

Broadly speaking, businesses are made up of two entities: On the one hand there are systems and processes and on the other there are the humans -- the people, the personnel of a business, the so-called Human Capital.

The Second Law of Consulting tells us that product is a implemented by people; customer service is executed by people; product is sold by people, people are led and managed by other people. So getting high performance from a company's personnel [maximizing a company's human capital] is important to having a high performance business. In this talk, I will describe processes that can enable a company to obtain high levels of performance from their personnel. The key concepts covered were:

• How to select appropriate personnel
• How to match up personnel with jobs so that we are asking people to do what they do best
• How to develop cohesive teams
• How to enable top performers to learn and develop the 'soft' skills that enable them to lead and extend their abilities
• further within the company
• How to retain the top performers that a company has worked so hard to develop

Speaker: Jim Morgenstern
Topic: Maximizing Human Capital
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9 December 2003

Speaker: Mark Ciechanowski, P.E.
Topic: People Culture vs. Process Culture: Can they co-exist?

Mark presented some of his work from a graduate course in Project Management he took at Oakland University. In the course, he completed a literature study of over 50 authors, papers, and books. The literature shows a distinct split in philosophies of authors between people-centric proponents and process-centric proponents. Can the two co-exist? Mark showed us that the two always co-exist.

These presentations help us to: Seek better ways of being effective at management; analyze our organizations; help you contribute.

Speaker: Bob Lusardi
Topic: Using Balanced Scorecards to manage performance

Balanced Scorecard is a way to measure performance on several scales and to visualize these measures as a unified picture. It is being used by more companies in an effort to better measure performance and get away from the distortions caused by single metric measures. The objective of the talk is to explain the Balanced Scorecard: what it is, what it is not, and how it is used. We will discuss its origins, attributes and what it can do for a business or even a project.

Peter Drucker set a precedent when he integrated a strategic element into an enterprise's performance analysis with his methodology, "Management by Objective." Management by objective set a trend which led to the invention of a variety of business performance management and business process reengineering methodologies. Most of us have been through a variety of them such as benchmarking, TQM, etc. In 1992 Robert Kaplan and David Norton introduced their concept of a Balanced Scorecard in the Harvard Business Review.

Understanding the health of a project or a business is vital to accurate decision making and, hence, critical to success. Yet, critics of traditional performance management techniques based on financials have argued that they only describe a firm's history, while providing little insight into future trends. The Balanced Scorecard is based upon the idea that the traditional measurements focused on financials, which tend to be somewhat retrospective. Financial metrics typically tell how an enterprise has performed, but give little indication as to how it will perform. The Balanced Scorecard includes metrics which provide both historical and future insights. Bob's Briefing

Conference Keynote Speaker: Paul Duffy, Manager, EE CAE Department, Ford Motor Company
Topic: ANALYTICAL METHODS IN AUTOMOTIVE EE SYSTEMS DESIGN

Abstract: As electrical content and complexity continue to grow, the design of the electrical system in a modern automobile becomes more challenging. Analytical tools and methods provide the ability to design these complex systems, in less time, with greater reliability. Future opportunities will emerge in modeling standards and system design tools.

Mr. Duffy has been in the automotive electronics industry for over 26 years. In that time, he has held numerous positions in product engineering and manufacturing for automotive electronic components and systems. His current position is EE CAE Department Manager at Ford Motor Company. Mr. Duffy holds a BSEE and an MSEE degree from the University of Michigan.

Speaker: Steve Kishok, C.S.D.P.
Topic: Telework

Steve Kishok led the lively discussion on telework. Almost everyone at the meeting had some experience with working away from work. One trend was clear that the underlying technology support is getting much better. Most of the discussion centered on how managers react to telework and the fact that productivity seems to rise when workers are given the opportunity to work from where they please. We discussed the underlying issue of how to measure productivity and value produced by an engineering organization. That is a much larger issue so we did not get far. Due to the interest, the meeting lasted longer than expected.

Much of the material we covered can be found in the following references.

• Jack Nilles – “Managing Telework: Strategies for Managing the Virtual Workforce” (John Wiley & Sons, ISBN: 0471293164, Published August 1998)
• http://www.workingfromanywhere.org
• http://www.telework.org
• http://www.teleworkconsortium.org

Speaker: Mark Ciechanowski, P.E.
Topic: Implementation Using UML and the RUP - Lessons from Graduate Project

Mark presented some of his lessons learned from his graduate course in Software Engineering Project at Oakland University. His partner and he used Rational Unified Process (RUP) and UML to develop a small web application. He showed that they projected how much weekly effort they would put toward the project, and used the projected and actual effort as an indicator of when the project was off-track. A few times during the project, they put much effort into fixing problems. During these times, they didn't realize that they were not making progress to-plan until they analyzed their effort data. Continuous review of effort provided immediate awareness of project snags.

LEADERSHIP AND PHILOSOPHY – RANDAL C. GAEREMINCK
Randal Gaereminck spoke on the leadership and philosophy that the Army was using to modernize its acquisition process. This was a very comprehensive talk that ranged from organizational leadership and structure to personal leadership growth. Randal is one of the folks who is making the Army the information age organization that moves fast and flexibly both on the battlefield and in the acquisition area. He gave sound advice on how to grow into a leadership position and how to achieve personal and professional growth. The talk described how to take advantage of opportunities in order to advance your career by becoming multi-functional and multi-knowledgeable. He discussed how to find a successful mentor and how to benefit from a mentor-protégé relationship. By learning how to be a good employee, you can learn how to be an effective leader and vice-versa. He gave some guiding principles including emphasizing true leadership instead of simply management, reducing bureaucracy and hierarchy, creating an agile, responsive, value added, streamlined organization, and creating a corporate culture of openness, teaming, and sharing. He emphasized that leaders must adopt and exhibit certain attributes and values in order to lead by example. Excellence in leadership is linked to maintaining the correct personal and professional priorities, and working tactically but thinking strategically. Randal left us this list of sources on leadership. He is completing his PhD in leadership this year. Reading List

See Randal's management reading list.
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Chapter Meeting of 10 Dec 2002

Speaker: Steve Kishok, Marty Biancalana
Topic: Requirements Definition

The discussion was on how to do requirements definition so the result will be useful and actually improve product or process. We used material from the book Exploring Requirements, Quality Before Design by Gause & Weinberg to stimulate discussion. The meeting engendered quite a lot of discussion. Formal methods were discussed especially the strengths and weaknesses of the more popular ones. The fact that requirements definition is a human communications problem more than anything else was the key factor we took away from the meeting.

Software Metrics, IBM; Southfield, MI
Speaker: Steve Kishok
Topic: Software Metrics

Steven Kishok will lead a discussion of how to measure software. Whether planning a project that uses software, managing such a project, or doing a post-mortem, software needs to be estimated, planned, and measured. Join us and discuss how you measure software and hear how others do it. The meeting went a little longer than planned as the topic engendered comments, and questions from those attending. One of the key issues was the use of such processes as the CMM and the procedures demanded by such processes vs a looser environment. While metrics are used in both extremes, how they are used and why a manager would choose say an SEI level 4 organization vs one that (if measured) would be level 2?

TOUR of TACOM, TACOM; Warren, MI

The US Army Tank Automotive Command is doing leading edge work in many facets of land vehicles. Main Battle Tanks are only one product line and a specialty one at that. Come and see simulation capabilities, industry partnerships, collision avoidance and much more.

Speaker: Bruce Emaus, Vector CANTech, Inc.
Topic: Automotive Software

Chapter 18??? At least for one night as Chapter III (Communications and Aerospace Electronics), Chapter V (Computer), and Chapter X (Engineering Management) combine to present "Technical and Business Aspects of Automotive Distributed Embedded Systems" by Bruce Emaus at the Section Spring Meeting on March 27. Come learn about the changing landscape of vehicle network requirements from one of the pioneers and leaders in distributed embedded systems, vehicle electronics, and in-vehicle software development!

In the next five years, the automotive industry will be providing expanded capabilities to the consumer using multimedia data communications and in-vehicle software. Drive-by-wire, smart sensor and smart actuator networking, vehicle telematics, and other technological advances are dependent upon robust and reliable high speed networks and distributed processing. The development of these networks and software must consider not only technical issues but business, legal, testability, safety, and performance issues as well. This presentation will cover these issues with respect to the current state-of-the-art in the automotive industry, and future developments and directions of research already underway, some spearheaded by the speaker himself.

Bruce Emaus is the president of Vector CANTech, a company developing off-the-shelf software components and tools for the Controller Area Network (CAN). He is the chairman of the Society of Automotive Engineers Software Task Force and is a member of the Vehicle Architecture For Data Communication Standards Committee, playing a leading role in the development of many key automotive standards. He has been a pioneer in the automotive industry, developing Ford's first trip computer, Ford's first integrated circuit, and Ford's first peer-to-peer UART-based protocol during his 30 year career in microcontroller software, hardware, and systems. Bruce's comfortable and engaging speaking style will make the evening entertaining and enjoyable for all.

Decision Aids, IBM Building, Southfield, MI.

A discussion of decision aids that are really useful. About 3 years ago, A member of this society brought information about the Analytic Hierarchy Process to Veridian (then ERIM International). It was used in several projects and is still being used and the Analytic Network Process is being studied.

Find out how these methods compare to more traditional methods. Bring your favorite decision aid and share with others. Two headed coins will be confiscated at the door.
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Minutes of the 11 Dec 2001 Chapter X Meeting
Speaker: Marty Biancalana
Topic: The Hawthorne Effect

The meeting was held on 11 Dec 2001 at the Veridian Systems facility in Ann Arbor, MI. The meeting began shortly after 6:30 pm.

The major topic was a discussion of the Hawthorne Effect. This is the effect first reported by Elton Mayo after work at the Hawthorne facility of Western Electric in the late 1920's and early 1030's. The attitudes of the workers, their relationships with each other, their relationship with the experimenter, and even outside events (the great depression) all affected the outcome of simple productivity experiments. This effect made it difficult or impossible to measure the effects of simple changes in work conditions on productivity.

Changes in lighting, rest periods, length of work day were introduced with conflicting results ( both more and less light produced higher productivity in one experiment and no change in another). The impact on today is felt in the experiments we do with our workplaces. Changes in process or procedure that produce a positive (or negative) result are not scalable or at times even repeatable. The humans in the experiment are effected as much or more by relations with the managers, with the company policy, organizational tradition, or perception of the group's social status as they are by the change.

The discussion was very illuminating. The effect was attributed to the effects of the organization, un-measured or controlled variables, and on the types of conversations that affected the human participants. The participants seemed to gain perspective on the way management changes really affect people. This was pointed out as being both very good and sometimes not so good. A good example was cited as a military unit that knew its mission continuing to perform in spite of less competent leaders. The not so good example is of workers setting the production rate by informal agreement in spite of changes to increase production. Since a manager is a worker to a superior, this concept is not limited to factory workers or the lowest rung on the organizational chart.

The discussion then branched out into what topics we should discuss and how to better structure our chapter to support the needs of our members. The ideas were:

1. Discuss the effect of globalization on the engineering manager. What impact does it have? What impact can it have?
2. Discuss how to measure the effectiveness of an engineering function. What metrics can be used? How should these metrics be used in various types of engineering organizations? Can we even classify engineering organization in a way that makes measurements more accurate?
3. Structure the chapter into specialties to have the individual or team keep up with changes in some aspect of our discipline and become the reporter for the chapter.
4. Meet in a more central location. Ann Arbor seems to be at the edge of the area that is readily accessible for a meeting.

Chapter X held its experimental Virtual Meeting on 7 Aug 2001 at 6:00pm. The following brave people participated: Hassan Hassan, Steve Kuschel, Steve Kishok, Martin Biancalana.

Things did not work as well as hoped. The connection proved to be unstable and voice connection was even worse. We were able to link no more than 3 people at one time. Only Hassan was able to use the voice connection over the network.. Both Steve Kuschel and Steve Kishok were able to share and modify the briefing attached. It was to be the main briefing of the virtual meeting.

In preparation for the meeting, the connection had worked acceptably for two people at a time. the inability to use voice was attributed to firewall problems. During the meeting, we could not get the voice part to work even with Steve Kuschel who was just down the hall.

It is obvious that we will have to identify and solve several problems before we can use netmeeting for everyday business. As we identify the problems we will post the results and solutions to our web site. The general consensus was that the meeting failed in its stated purpose, but that the ability that was hinted at was very valuable so effort to make it real and reliable would be well spent. Thanks to all, Marty.

Software Process Meeting Goes into Overtime On 5 June, chapter X, held its regular meeting. These are normally scheduled for about 1.5 hours, but this one proved too interesting to be confined to such a short time. It was after 22:00 before the meeting adjourned. The discussion was still proceeding. Steve Kishok presented some interesting facts about the use of software process to improve the quality of code. This provoked the discussion that sent the meeting into extra hours.

The initial statistic that only about 2% of the software written for the DoD meets requirements and is used motivated the meeting. The basic premise that using a structured approach to writing software is a good idea was not challenged. What was discussed was the methodologies used by SEI and the Air Force for avionics. These bring software from an individual art to a repeatable process, or so their supporters assert. There were several important ideas that surfaced. One involved the cost to achieve certification and the overhead that it brings to each item produced. This was deemed as necessary when the software affected safety of life or property. The debate was on the use of such methods for test cases, research trials, or other use-once code. An overlooked aspect was brought out that linked the use of these processes to projects supported by products (aircraft, nuclear powerplants, space stations, etc) as opposed to projects supported by a customer who is paying for person hours. In the latter case, the customer is much more likely to forgo the process in favor of more trials, further trade studies, or additional innovation.

One of the key premises of these processes, that the requirements are known, was brought into question. The insight was that the preliminary versions of the product, or even the initial design, changes the way the customer looks at their environment causing a change in requirements. This feedback where the very design of a new or radically improved capability so changes the users view of the environment that the requirements change, is a dynamic that is overlooked in many developments. It is one reason why spiral development and prototyping should be a favored methodology. The discussion on personal software practice and how, when designed properly, the process promotes learning and mutual assistance was enlightening. It is one of the really strong positive aspects of getting serious enough with software process to get certified. The benefits of breaking large projects into many very small projects that interface in clearly defined, and very limited ways, took a while to discuss. The basic premise is that integration is better understood than writing software. Partitioning a design to allow such a development is more time consuming at first, but leads to manageable software modules and a more successful project.

The meeting was held as part of the SEM Spring Section Meeting at Vistion. The meeting was called to order at 5:55pm.

The only agenda item was our featured Speaker, Chuck Sawicki. The Engineering Management Chapter hosted Chuck Sawicki from IBM at the Spring Section Meeting. Mr Sawicki gave a very insightful talk about the use of collaboration tools in an engineering environment. His discussion covered the misconceptions of integrated engineering and the value of more general collaboration tools. These tools foster the interaction of engineers across disciplines while avoiding the costly pitfalls of trying to automatically link processes across those disciplines. The cost savings are large when the tools are used properly. Throughout the talk Mr Sawicki answered questions and moderated discussion on various points that included the use of automatic translation as part of the collaboration link, and the proper use of video in these collaborations. Several existing tools were mentioned and their benefits and drawbacks discussed. This was an especially relevant topic to the Engineering Management Chapter as it plans to hold a virtual meeting in August.

Meeting was held at the Veridian ERIM facility in Ann Arbor MI. There was one virtual participant. The meeting was called to order at 6:50pm. The agenda was as follows: Introduction & connection for virtual meeting; Details of Speaker for Spring Meeting; Introduction of New Officers; Discussion of Earned Value; New business.

The first part of the meeting to make introductions and get familiar with the SameTime software that we were trying as a way of creating a virtual meeting. Liang Downey was the virtual attendee pioneering this technology for Chapter X.

We discussed Chuck Sawicki, the speaker we will be sponsoring for the Spring meeting, and his talk. The abstract is posted on this site under the Spring Section Meeting. This sounds like a very interesting and useful topic.

It should be a very interesting night with ---- discussing engineering collaboration and ---- talking about power systems on Space Station Alpha.

The new officers were introduced. Since they are running unopposed, we don't even wait for the count, to say nothing about recounts. How's that for coming in ahead of schedule. Chairman: Steve Kishok. Vice Chair: Liang Downey. Secretary: Martin Biancalana.

The discussion of earned value followed. This was, as usual, fairly interactive. as a tool Earned Value is being required more on medium to large projects as a way to keep track of what progress is really being made and measure that progress in terms of dollars and schedule. From the PM's point of view it is one of the very few metrics that clearly can look forward and predict trouble before it is so deep that mitigation is difficult.

The only New Business was to agree to try Netmeeting as a platform for virtual meetings as an experiment. This is looking forward to August when we will try to have a completely virtual meeting.
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Minutes of the 5 Dec 2000 Chapter X Meeting

Meeting was held at the Veridian ERIM facility in Ann Arbor MI. The meeting was called to order at 6:50pm. Most of the meeting was taken up with a discussion of program management tools. The discussion revolved around which tools were more efficient or appropriate when used in which parts of managing a program. The overall list of topics was: Scheduling and planning; MS Project, TimeLine; Spreadsheets: Excel, QuattroPro; Tracking / accounting, Spreadsheets; Reporting, Word Processing: MS Word, WordPerfect; Graphics: Power Point, CorelDraw; Link to corporate accounting?; PERL, Data Base: Paradox, Access; Decision aids - implement process: spreadsheets, mathcad; Process aids.

The discussion brought out several very important points. Most of the tools and tasks are actually backwards looking. That is they seek to determine, report, or explain what has already happened. Only the planning tasks such as scheduling is clearly future oriented. Process tasks like extracting data deal with the present. In this vein, the discussion brought out the fact that the most valuable schedule was the one done before the project started and it was the least accurate. The most accurate schedule is done at the end of the project and it is the least useful. One insight was that these backward looking tools always inserted a lag in the management control process. Control systems with delays built in generally are unstable. Therefore managing strictly by the numbers is insufficient for success. An understanding of each task stabilized by its history and relation to the over all program provides a better method. It also requires dealing with people, task leads, workers, managers, customers, and suppliers to name a few.

There was some discussion about using tools like PERL to extract information from corporate or customer data bases and format it for use in standard tools like spreadsheets. Using GNU PERL together with batch files in NT can automate sequences. Even a simple sequence like FTP a group of files, rename them based on their contents, and put them in the directory used to track the program, can save much time each time it is executed. The topic of decision aids brought out the fact that modern tools made even powerful decision process like the Analytic Hierarchy Process available to anyone who can use a spreadsheet or MathCad. It was also pointed out that such techniques are seldom used in planning a project or executing it, but rather as part of the project to produce the desired result.

Some time was spent on discussing the benefits and shortfalls of various ways to manage a project using network or web based tools. The consensus is that with today's technology simpler is better. A shared directory is very useful while a web based coordination tool is easier for offsite team members to access. Two of the tools mentioned were Quick Place and the Collaborative Virtual Workspace. There was agreement that the most widely used collaboration tool was E-Mail.
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