There are so many technological advances out there within the digital engineering space, have we seen any successful threading tools being "orchestrated" successfully by PM's today that allow us to view risks vs enhancement opportunities as they pertain to the supply chain at a component level, would love to see enhancements in real time like an F1 PM? (Asking for a friend : )
NAVAIR has developed a capability that delivers near real-time, component level risk visibility across hardware and software, pretty close to the live F1 style view you’re after. Would be glad to connect and share more, for you or your friend. :)
PMs need to own both the design / product baseline, and the supply chain. Commercial supply chain elements - especially electronics, IT and C4I - go obsolete on a regular basis. And full knowledge of the design / product performance is necessary to stimulate the supply chain for form/fit/function replacements.
Having the top level systems Data rights and non-proprietary open architecture are also key…despite the industry’s constant whining about their IP.
It really comes down to two things. First, it’s about delegating down to the lowest decision maker. Second, if you do that, then you can actually have a marketplace. The article mentioned Ukraine, and that's kind of exactly what they're doing right now. They aren't centralized, and that's why they can adapt so fast. We need that same kind of philosophy and marketplace ecosystem so we can just buy and swap stuff quickly.
Interesting approach that has some potential value, as long as a couple things are addressed:
1. This model is predicated on the operational needs (the big "R" Requirements) being properly understood and articulated. This does not mean (as it often does now) a specific material solution (e.g. "120mm main gun") but an actual Required Capability, so PMs can focus on material solutions to meet the Requirement. This remains THE shortfall in any process changes.
2. There will need to be greater transparency across businesses, at least WRT the government's access to information, so that PM know what is available and are able to adequately assess the value and/or risk of particular elements.
3. Government will likely require a viable AI capability to manage the large scale data that this approach makes available, not just to ensure the ability to "see everything" but to understand when more than one PM is building a dependency on a single, or small number of, suppliers.
PMs today are all too dismissive of the Big R war fighting requirements - which are the war fighting MoS, MoEs missions/tasks/functions to be achieved on the battlespace. They don’t understand or appreciate the war fighting results desired by operators and commanders, and go too quickly to the bright shiny objects and “trade space!!” without understanding the “so what?” for the warfighter and properly deriving the proper system characteristics and performance first, before delving into design solution specifics. It’s not hard to do, yet they spend months avoiding it instead of just doing the proper top level systems engineering.
Highlights the need, I believe, for tighter interface between the user rep and the PM; also for user representatives to be better trained on how to determine and more importantly define big R requirements to avoid preconceived material solutions.
There are so many technological advances out there within the digital engineering space, have we seen any successful threading tools being "orchestrated" successfully by PM's today that allow us to view risks vs enhancement opportunities as they pertain to the supply chain at a component level, would love to see enhancements in real time like an F1 PM? (Asking for a friend : )
NAVAIR has developed a capability that delivers near real-time, component level risk visibility across hardware and software, pretty close to the live F1 style view you’re after. Would be glad to connect and share more, for you or your friend. :)
PMs need to own both the design / product baseline, and the supply chain. Commercial supply chain elements - especially electronics, IT and C4I - go obsolete on a regular basis. And full knowledge of the design / product performance is necessary to stimulate the supply chain for form/fit/function replacements.
Having the top level systems Data rights and non-proprietary open architecture are also key…despite the industry’s constant whining about their IP.
It really comes down to two things. First, it’s about delegating down to the lowest decision maker. Second, if you do that, then you can actually have a marketplace. The article mentioned Ukraine, and that's kind of exactly what they're doing right now. They aren't centralized, and that's why they can adapt so fast. We need that same kind of philosophy and marketplace ecosystem so we can just buy and swap stuff quickly.
Interesting approach that has some potential value, as long as a couple things are addressed:
1. This model is predicated on the operational needs (the big "R" Requirements) being properly understood and articulated. This does not mean (as it often does now) a specific material solution (e.g. "120mm main gun") but an actual Required Capability, so PMs can focus on material solutions to meet the Requirement. This remains THE shortfall in any process changes.
2. There will need to be greater transparency across businesses, at least WRT the government's access to information, so that PM know what is available and are able to adequately assess the value and/or risk of particular elements.
3. Government will likely require a viable AI capability to manage the large scale data that this approach makes available, not just to ensure the ability to "see everything" but to understand when more than one PM is building a dependency on a single, or small number of, suppliers.
PMs today are all too dismissive of the Big R war fighting requirements - which are the war fighting MoS, MoEs missions/tasks/functions to be achieved on the battlespace. They don’t understand or appreciate the war fighting results desired by operators and commanders, and go too quickly to the bright shiny objects and “trade space!!” without understanding the “so what?” for the warfighter and properly deriving the proper system characteristics and performance first, before delving into design solution specifics. It’s not hard to do, yet they spend months avoiding it instead of just doing the proper top level systems engineering.
Highlights the need, I believe, for tighter interface between the user rep and the PM; also for user representatives to be better trained on how to determine and more importantly define big R requirements to avoid preconceived material solutions.
Hard problem changing culture…
Excellent points, totally agree