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Preference Modeling for Government-Owned Large-Scale Complex Engineered Systems: A Satellite Case Study

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Disciplinary Convergence in Systems Engineering Research

Abstract

The design of large-scale complex engineered systems (LSCES) has been shown to be a distributed decision-making problem involving hundreds or thousands of designers making decisions at different levels of an organizational hierarchy. Traditional systems engineering (SE) approaches use requirements to communicate the preference(s) of stakeholders to drive the decisions of the designers. Requirements, which act as proxies for actual preferences, only state what is not desired of the system rather than what is wanted. This leads to a lack of consistency in the communication of preferences across the subsystems (and even organizations) involved. Also, the current requirements-based SE approaches do not offer any system-level guidance in choosing the best among feasible design alternatives, where all the designs that satisfy requirements are treated equally. Value-driven design (VDD), an alternative SE approach, offers a new perspective on complex system design and emphasizes the importance of capturing true preferences of stakeholders using a meaningful decomposable value function. The formulation of an all-encompassing value function has been proven to be a very tedious process involving a huge overhead, as it requires understanding of the inherent design trades in the system. Past researchers have focused in detail on formulating value functions for commercial endeavors. The primary focus of this paper is to investigate how the formulation of value functions can be approached in a methodical manner using a data-based approach, specifically for a government-based agency (e.g., NASA). More specifically, this paper focuses on formulating a value function for a space telescope mission by identifying and analyzing different aspects involved in capturing preferences.

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Abbreviations

BankInt :

Monthly bank interest

Bspin-off :

Benefits from spin-off

Costm :

Monthly cost

n:

Predicted number of publications per month

Nslots :

Total number of observing slots leased over the entire operational lifetime of the telescope

OL:

Operational lifetime of space telescope in years

Please :

Leasing price per month

Rd:

Discount factor

Rev:

Revenue

SI:

Science Impact factor

TC:

Total Cost

TMC:

Total maintenance cost over the entire lifetime of the telescope

TOC:

Total operational cost over the entire lifetime of the telescope

V:

Value function/value

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

    Hanumanthrao Kannan, Syed Shihab & Christina L. Bloebaum

  2. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Maximilian Zellner, Ehsan Salimi & Ali Abbas

Authors
  1. Hanumanthrao Kannan
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  2. Syed Shihab
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  3. Maximilian Zellner
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  4. Ehsan Salimi
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  5. Ali Abbas
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  6. Christina L. Bloebaum
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hanumanthrao Kannan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Systems Architecting and Engineering Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Azad M. Madni

  2. Center for Systems and Software Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Barry Boehm

  3. Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Roger G. Ghanem

  4. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Daniel Erwin

  5. Systems Engineering Fellow, The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, California, USA

    Marilee J. Wheaton

Appendix A

Appendix A

Table 36.4 Attribute and design variables – satellite system
Full size table

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Kannan, H., Shihab, S., Zellner, M., Salimi, E., Abbas, A., Bloebaum, C.L. (2018). Preference Modeling for Government-Owned Large-Scale Complex Engineered Systems: A Satellite Case Study. In: Madni, A., Boehm, B., Ghanem, R., Erwin, D., Wheaton, M. (eds) Disciplinary Convergence in Systems Engineering Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62217-0_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62217-0_36

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62216-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62217-0

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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