System Design and Management Program Blog

Rajesh Nair, SDM '12: Teaching Entrepreneurship in India

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 13:38:00 +0000

By Kathryn O'Neill, MIT SDM Correspondent

Rajesh Nair, SDM '12
Photo by Kathy
Tarantola Photography

A successful entrepreneur with two master's degrees, Rajesh Nair, SDM '12, applied to MIT's System Design and Management (SDM) program to gain a broader, systems perspective on his business. What he got was a new mission in life—to tackle the problems of the developing world through entrepreneurship.

"I am still the CTO and chairman of my company, but now I see a much larger role that I want to play in the world," said Nair, who created an entrepreneurship program in India with the aid of a fellowship from MIT's Tata Center for Technology and Design. "Now my goal is to create a program that can generate 1,000 entrepreneurs in the next three years."

A self-described "gadget designer," Nair got his first master's in electronic product design and technology from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. But, he soon realized that a product's design is only as good as it is manufacturable. So, he got a master's in manufacturing engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Nair went on to found his own company, Degree Controls, which specializes in heat management for electronics. But after the business had become a multimillion-dollar venture, Nair found himself eager to investigate larger, systems challenges. "Every technical product we were making was a subsystem to a larger system, which in in turn was a subsystem itself—all finally serving a broader social system," he said. "That started to interest me a lot."

He decided to get another master's degree—in engineering and management—from SDM because the program had something he couldn't find anywhere else: "The program gives you that 30,00-foot view," Nair said.

At SDM, Nair realized that entrepreneurship could solve many of the complex, systems challenges facing developing countries like India, where he grew up. "If you can convert more graduates into entrepreneurs, they will go out and solve these problems and create jobs," he said. "If you look at the last 30 to 40 years, you see that almost all new jobs are created by startups. Existing companies were negative job creators."

For his SDM thesis project, Nair therefore decided to investigate whether entrepreneurship training could inspire college students to launch new businesses in India. Synthesizing many of the lessons he learned at SDM—in system architecture, system dynamics, product design and development, and more—Nair developed and ran a seven-week workshop on entrepreneurship at Mar Baselios College of Engineering and Technology, a small school in the south of India with no existing entrepreneurship program.

Rajesh Nair, SDM '12, poses with his entrepreneuship
students at Mar Baselios College of Engineering
and Technology in Trivandrum, India.

"My thought was if I could go to the general population, a village or school, and teach them a basic method where any average student could take on entrepreneurial thinking, you could get more entrepreneurs," Nair said, who introduced students to a full range of entrepreneurship skills, from product design to business strategy.

The result? Out of 50 students, more than 30 now say they now want to become entrepreneurs, and the class spawned six startups—at a college that had produced just one student startup in the previous 12 years.

"These students helped me find my next mission," said Nair, who is now trying to streamline his workshop so that he can kick-start businesses more quickly; he plans to teach another workshop in India this April. "I think we can inspire the next generation to take the [entrepreneurship] risk."

SDM Alums Use Systems Thinking to Help Power Chilean Observatory

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 23:30:00 +0000

By Jorge Moreno, SDM '11, and Donny Holaschutz, SDM '10

Jorge Moreno, left, and Donny Holaschutz
at the Paranal Observatory.

Jorge Moreno, SDM '11, and Donny Holaschutz, SDM '10, launched their consulting company, inodú, to bring innovative solutions to the globe's energy and sustainability challenges. Recently, the company took on a major project to help the Chilean Energy Ministry and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) find energy supply alternatives for one of the most advanced observatory complexes in the world. Learn more about their work in this presentation, which is part of the MIT SDM Systems Thinking Webinar Series.

The challenge: With crystal clear skies and dry air, the European Southern Observatory is located in one of the best 1,000 square kilometers for astronomic observation on the planet (Figure 1). In the next 10 years, the ESO plans to expand its facilities by constructing the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) on a mountain in Chile known as Cerro Armazones (Figure 2). The E-ELT will be 22 kilometers from the existing Paranal Observatory. The addition of the E-ELT will triple the electricity consumption in an area that is currently isolated from the grid.


Figure 1. The European Southern Observatory's facilities. © ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Figure 2. Artist's rendering of European
Extremely Large Telescope.^[1] © ESO/L. Calçada

The planned construction of the E-ELT and the challenges faced by the current energy system encouraged ESO to re-evaluate its energy supply strategy. Working with the Chilean Energy Ministry and ESO, inodú developed solutions that could help the latter cope with planned increases in energy consumption, identify energy efficiency measures, and satisfy the need for electricity in a more reliable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly manner. The project led by inodú is part of a long history of collaboration between the Chilean government and ESO, and it aligns with the goals of the Chilean Energy Strategy 2012-2030, which aims to scale up the deployment of renewable energy projects and energy efficiency measures.

The approach: To re-architect ESO's energy system and identify sustainable energy-efficiency measures, inodú used an integrated set of methodologies grounded in systems thinking. The company began by investigating the facts and key stakeholders' perceptions of how the energy system should create value for current and future observatory operations. The team visited the Paranal Observatory facilities to evaluate the existing energy system and to learn what is needed for a night of observations. Finally, inodú engaged local suppliers of batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and various types of fossil fuel generators to explore what potential energy solutions are available in the market.

The inodú team then developed energy system goals and requirements. By engaging the stakeholders and understanding the local context, the team was able to consider the system beyond purely economic considerations—including such properties as reliability, maintainability, flexibility, adaptability, reparability, modularity, evolve-ability, robustness, and environmental friendliness. The system goals and requirements synthesized by the team were used to establish a frame of reference by which all possible solutions could be evaluated.

Next, inodú employed a powerful modeling tool to evaluate many hybrid system configurations (solar, wind, batteries, and fossil fuel generators) and assess them in light of the defined system goals and requirements. These potential solutions were then compared to connecting the observatory to the grid, 50 kilometers from the facility. Finally, the team conducted a study to identify some of the legal and permitting challenges associated with the development of the project.

Figure 3. Potential hybrid system solutions shown against cost and environmental friendliness metrics.

The findings: The "design space" was defined and analyzed through the frame of reference set by the system goals and requirements. The team identified the following insights (Figure 3):

Based on wind and solar resource assessments, the expected observatory load profile, and equipment alternatives, the solar/fossil fuel generator hybrid solution will be more reliable, cost-efficient, and environmentally friendly than a wind/fossil fuel generator hybrid solution.
The size and number of the fossil fuel generators are the design variables that have the most impact on the current configuration's environmental friendliness and cost efficiency metrics.

Understanding the stakeholders' needs and constraints allowed the team to finally arrive at five potential solutions based on hybrid systems. In addition, the team evaluated the option of developing a transmission line to connect the observatory complex to the grid. The alternatives can power Paranal's energy demand with the E-ELT included. A summary of the evaluation is presented in Figure 4. It was found that the cost of the transmission is comparable to the cost of developing hybrid-isolated system solutions in the region.

Figure 4. Evaluation of cases against defined requirements.

The results: By synthesizing the key stakeholders' constraints and perceptions of how the energy system should create value for the observatory—as well as visiting Paranal to observe the system and the operators at work—inodú facilitated a joint fact-finding process that allowed the Chilean government and ESO to systematically evaluate different alternatives for providing energy to the Paranal Observatory and the future E-ELT.

Inodú found that developing a high-voltage transmission line to Chile's Central Interconnected System is comparable in cost to developing a highly reliable hybrid isolated system. The development of a transmission line would elegantly satisfy the primary system goal, which is to facilitate astronomic observation in a more reliable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly manner.

Special thanks: We would like to thank Marcel Silva from the Chilean Energy Ministry and Roberto Tamai from the European Southern Observatory for their support of this project.

Learn more about inodú
About the authors

Jorge Moreno
SDM alumnus Jorge Moreno, an inodú cofounder, has extensive experience in the energy industry in the United States and Latin America. He holds a master's degree in engineering and management from MIT and bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Donny Holaschutz
SDM alumnus Donny Holaschutz, also an inodú cofounder, is a seasoned entrepreneur with experience in both for- and not-for-profit ventures related to clean and sustainable technology. He holds a master's degree in engineering and management from MIT and bachelor's and master's degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Notes

¹The E-ELT will have a 39-meter mirror, making it the biggest telescope in the world to observe in the visible and the near-infrared spectra. The total cost of the E-ELT is €1,083 million, spread over 10 years.

MIT Natural Resources Study Tour: Digging Deep into the Chilean Mining Business

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 01:27:00 +0000

By Renato Lima de Oliveira, MIT Ph.D. Student, Political Science

An interdisciplinary group of researchers, faculty, and students from MIT and Harvard traveled to Chile in December 2013 to explore innovation, technology transfer in the mining industry, and a vision for the future of cities that are impacted by the exploitation of natural resources in a study tour organized by the MIT Mining and Oil & Gas Club (MOG), MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (better known as MISTI) Chile, and the MIT Sloan Latin America Office. The aim of the group was both to learn more about Chile's mining industry and to exchange information and practices to further contribute to the industrial and social developmental of the Andean country.

Stakeholders and members of the MIT Mining and Oil & Gas Club,
which was founded by SDM students.

Chile is the world's largest producer of copper and is known for combining increasing levels of economic and social development with a commodity-based economy. "This trip was a concrete effort to increase the awareness and interest inside the MIT community about the natural resources industry on a global scale. At the same time, it helped to promote MIT to the stakeholders of the natural resources industry. We selected Chile because mining has been its most important industry for the last century," said Juan Esteban Montero, SDM '12, one of the founders of MOG and himself a native Chilean. "During this trip, we had the opportunity to work together with people from every part of the industry, from engineers to community leaders and government officials. I think that MIT founder William Barton Rogers, who was a geologist and educator, would be proud to see the MIT students, researchers, and professors working together in a multidisciplinary way in one of the most important mining regions of the world." In addition to minerals, Chile is a large producer and exporter of wines, fruits, and forestry products.

The workshop kicked off December 1 in Santiago, with the opening ceremony of the Eighth Meeting of the Copper 2013 Conference. The Copper 2013 Conference, an important copper industry conference that takes place only every three years, featured presentations by MIT faculty and students, including Assistant Professor Antoine Allanore of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Miguel Paredes, Ph.D. student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and Sergio Burdiles, Sloan Fellow '12.

Also during Copper 2013, Nancy Leveson, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and of engineering systems at MIT, presented research based on her recent book, Engineering a Safer World (MIT Press, 2012). In this work, she proposes a model of systemic evaluation that leads to safer systems, the Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes, or STAMP. She also presented the STAMP approach and its advantages over traditional methods during a meeting at the Chilean Safety Association (ACHS), which was very well received. "We want to bring the best practices to Chile, and this talk by Professor Leveson on system safety was really important to further our mission," said Sebastian Reyes, vice president of strategy at ACHS. The association provides safety and insurance solutions to half of the corporate market of Chile, employing about 5,000 people. Leveson was joined in introducing the STAMP model to Chile by John Helferich, SDM '10, an MIT Ph.D. student in materials science. Helferich presented the model and its uses for food safety to the MIT Chile Club, which gathers the MIT alumni community from that country.

Diego Hernandez (right), ex-president of Corporacion
Nacional del Cobre de Chile (Codelco-Chile), the largest copper
production company in the world, with SDM alumni John Helferich (left)
and Juan Esteban Montero (center), a cofounder of MOG,
at the Copper 2013 Conference in Santiago, Chile.

In addition to participating in the Copper 2013 Conference, on the third day of the trip the group visited the Advanced Mining Technology Center (AMTC) at the University of Chile. The AMTC comprises almost 200 researchers working in five different groups: exploration and ore deposit modeling, mine planning and design, mineral processing and extractive metallurgy, mining automation, and water and environmental sustainability. In common, all groups aim to address the challenges facing today's complex mining production. The AMTC produces both basic research as well as specific projects with mining companies, such as the Chilean state-owned Codelco and international giants BHP Billiton, Anglo American, and Vale. MIT students and faculty learned about the main projects that each research group is conducting, such as developing physical models of completely automated mineral extraction for underground mining, driverless cars for mining applications, and bacterial leaching of copper sulfide ores in underground mining. The principal investigator of this last project, Dr. Tomás Vargas, hosted the MIT group in its visit to the AMTC along with Rodrigo Cortés, manager of the technology transfer division.

Santiago has a significant concentration of the population, universities, and companies of Chile, but the mining industry is centered in other regions. Following mens et manus, the guiding MIT spirit of "mind and hand," the workshop proceeded to where production actually takes place, which meant traveling more than 1,000 kilometers from Santiago to Antofagasta, a municipality in the north of Chile in the Atacama Desert. The second part of the workshop started December 4 in Antofagasta and comprised visits to the Escondida mine and the Komatsu factory as well as talks with local stakeholders and social entrepreneurs.

The Escondida Copper Mine

Chile is the major world producer of copper, and the Escondida mine is itself the biggest copper mine of the world, producing 5 percent of global output. It was discovered in 1981, and commercial exploration started 10 years later. The mine is operated by BHP Billiton and employs about 15,000 workers and subcontractors. It is located at 3,100 meters (10,170 feet) above sea level and 170 kilometers (100 miles) from Antofagasta. There, the workshop participants had access to several facilities and productive process, getting to know this massive operation that is managed by state-of-the-art techniques and capital equipment. "While visiting Escondida, I had the opportunity to speak with local workers and I was extremely impressed with their dedication to improve their condition through innovation," said Jared Atkinson, an MIT Ph.D. student in geophysics.

Building a Better Antofagasta

On December 5, the MIT group dived into the reality of the mining city of Antofagasta. In different activities, the group helped to articulate a vision for the future of the city and to devise solutions to day-to-day problems. In a truly interactive and hands-on experience, the group started the day promoting Antofagasta's first "hackathon" to discuss the future of the city, 200 years from now. A hackathon is a collaborative event focused on creating solutions to given problems, an idea originally created by computer programmers. This activity was followed by a meeting with local executives and social entrepreneurs, who provided their insights to the MIT students and also learned business, technology, and social practices from the group from Massachusetts.

Participants in the MIT Natural Resources Study Tour at the Komatsu plant.

Political scientists and economists frequently point to the unique developmental challenges that resource abundance brings. To help Antofagasta manage its resources, the workshop promoted a meeting with local stakeholders to discuss the future of the city that today is heavily dependent on the copper industry and susceptible to the fluctuation of commodity prices. An initial presentation by MIT Ph.D. candidate Julio Pertuze addressed the history of MIT and its more than 150 years of innovation and close collaboration with the industry.

Participants were then divided into two groups and worked to envision the headlines of a newspaper published 200 years from now. In this activity, they discussed what they want the city to be and what paths of action are conducive to long-term development and diversification. "Desert is the place to live: Antofagasta beats Oslo in quality of life," read one headline. This kicked off a discussion of quality of life in the city and opportunities for knowledge creation, adoption of renewable sources of energy, and sustainable environmental practices. "I think we have a lot of potential in Antofagasta. We have to believe in our capacity to innovate and build a better city," said Mathias Werth, an industrial engineer who participated in the hackathon and has lived most of his life in the city. Werth is manager of the Komatsu plant, a unit that provides support for heavy machinery used in the mining industry. The next day, Werth hosted the MIT visitors at the Komatsu factory, showing them all the facilities and revealing how the adoption of new technologies and production process has enabled this local unit of a multinational company to expand production, local employment, and markets beyond Chile.

Following the hackathon, local entrepreneurs joined the group from Cambridge for an exchange of knowledge and best practices. The meeting gathered participants from a variety of backgrounds, including startup investors, community organizers, college students, and cultural producers. Each of the more than 20 groups at the meeting presented their business activities and main challenges, followed by mentoring from the MIT students. Issues ranged from financial challenges such as raising capital to social issues, including improving local education and youth inclusion.

The mentoring activity was an opportunity for local entrepreneurs to meet each other, exchange experiences, and develop team solutions to common challenges with the help of the MIT team. To achieve that, students trained in the M.B.A. and Sloan Fellows programs presented their business experience and talked about business strategies and how to develop them, providing examples from their own personal experiences and methodologies developed through the MIT social enterprise program.

The message resonated with the locals. "What impressed me the most was the inspirational message that I heard today. No matter what happens, I know I want to be a successful entrepreneur," said Giselle Cerda, a native of Antofagasta who recently graduated with a degree in tourism and is working on a proposal for a social project aimed at improving the identification of inhabitants with the city and its history. The exchange of experiences was also a highlight for Grace Zamorano, a teacher who is trying to fund a project aimed at introducing recycling practices in the mining city. "It was really helpful and I heard lots of good ideas," said Zamorono.

December 6, the final day of the trip, was dedicated to a visit to the Komatsu plant and social projects in Antofagasta. Members of MOG praised the schedule and organization, which had being locally managed by Francisco Delpino, who is also a mining engineer. "I really liked the trip as a whole. We learned about the mining industry from many angles. This trip gave me a unique perspective about the people who work in this industry and the opportunities that technology can offer to solve problems and necessities that can change the production and human beings," said Yuly Fuentes-Medel, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT Sloan and one of the founders of MOG.

"The impact of this trip aligned well with the goals of the MIT Sloan Latin America Office. I was able to promote various academic programs to potential applicants, there was some serious exchange of cutting-edge research, and the students really committed themselves by not only observing what was happening but influencing and exchanging ideas through the hackathon and the entrepreneurship workshop with local stakeholders. These events encouraged new multidisciplinary ways of thinking," stated Julie Strong, director of the MIT Sloan Latin America Office.

Excited by the results of the trip, club members are already planning new activities. "This trip to Chile, with its sound planning and impressive execution, went beyond the highest expectations, adding real value and leaving a strong impression on all those involved. Initiatives like this must be repeated, and we have been analyzing scenarios for visiting East Africa, Brazil, or Australia, where the extractive industries are facing particularly interesting challenges," said Jorge Le Dantec, SDM '13, president of MOG.

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS & ORGANIZERS

Antoine Allanore — MIT Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Bernhard Stohr — MIT M.B.A. '13
Bill Finney — MIT Water Quality and Environment
Cristobal Garcia — MIT S.M. '04
Emele Uka — MIT Chemical Engineering Undergraduate
Juan Esteban Montero — MIT Engineering Systems Graduate Student (Participant & Organizer)
Jared Atkinson — MIT Ph.D. Student, Geomechanics
Jason Gonzales — MIT M.B.A. Student
John Helferich — MIT Ph.D. Student, Materials Science and Engineering
Jorge Moreno — MIT S.M. '13, Engineering Systems
Julie Strong — Director, MIT Sloan Latin America Office
Julio Pertuze — MIT Ph.D. Student, Engineering Systems
Nancy Leveson — MIT Professor Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems
Rachel deLucas — MIT Materials Science Researcher
Renato Lima de Oliveira — MIT Ph.D. Student, Political Science
Sergio Burdiles — MIT Sloan Fellow
Tomas Folch — Harvard Graduate School of Design Research Associate
Yuly Fuentes-Medel — MIT Postdoc, Sloan School of Management
Camila Nardozzi — MIT MISTI Program Manager MIT-Chile (Organizer)

Daniel Adsit, SDM '13: Systems Integration

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 02:01:00 +0000

By Kathryn O'Neill, MIT SDM Correspondent

Daniel Mark Adsit, SDM '13, discovered the importance of systems thinking—and of combining engineering with management—even before entering MIT's System Design and Management (SDM) master's program.

In his first job, as a website designer and developer for small nonprofits, Adsit observed that business leaders frequently have trouble understanding the language of technology and that technical personnel, in turn, often lose sight of business objectives. "I started out as a technical person, but I realized that's not really going to get it done," Adsit said. "Solving real-world problems is what's important."

That's why he chose SDM. "I'd thought about an M.B.A. but it never really felt like the right fit for me," said Adsit, who came to SDM with seven years of experience working on large-scale information technology and supply chain integration projects in more that 15 countries.

SDM offered Adsit the opportunity to work with other mid-career professionals who shared his interest in using systems thinking to solve large-scale, complex challenges. "In SDM you get a rich experience working with people from different industries and different backgrounds," he said. "I'd spent most of my career in manufacturing and supply chains, so it was wonderful to work with people from healthcare, software development, nonprofit, and the military who are all experiencing analogous systems challenges."

Adsit joined SDM from Eaton Corporation, where he worked as a specialist evaluating, selecting, and implementing new system technologies to improve information visibility, enhance business capabilities, and streamline global order fulfillment. Although he entered the program as an experienced systems integrator, SDM was able to provide him with fresh insights.

"What I got out of SDM was a way to organize the experiences I'd had and make sense of them," Adsit said. "The key takeaway from the program is about optimizing the overall system rather than any particular piece."

Adsit graduated from MIT in February and launched his own company—Mergence Systems—to put systems integration tools and techniques, including concepts learned at SDM, to work helping companies integrate new technologies into existing systems. "I make sure technology is delivering value in a way that is relevant to stakeholders and those using the system," he said.

While Mergence Systems is still a new venture, Adsit is already making use of his SDM skills—particularly those taught in Systems Engineering, a required course. "Quality functional deployment is really helpful for relating a system's technical requirements to user needs," he said. "And, Pugh analysis can be used for evaluating, selecting, and combining concepts based on those underlying requirements."

Coursework from SDM Leadership: The Missing Link is also proving valuable. "That course is all about trying to have better interactions with people so you can better solve their problems," Adsit said. "It's such a meaningful course."

When he's not on the job, Adsit enjoys traveling—particularly to Eastern Europe—but he says he'll always be glad he spent time in Boston with SDM. "Being involved with something at MIT was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," he said. "SDM is amazing."

Wilfredo 'Alex' Sanchez Honored for Leadership, Innovation, Systems Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 01:40:00 +0000

By Lois Slavin, MIT SDM Communications Director

Alex Sanchez
Photo by Dave Schultz

On March 10, 2014, the SDM community convened for the presentation of the Class of 2013 MIT SDM Student Award for Leadership, Innovation, and Systems Thinking. The award, created by the SDM staff in 2010, honors an SDM student who, during his or her first year of matriculation, demonstrates the highest level of:

strategic, sustainable contributions to fellow SDM students and the broader SDM and MIT communities;
skills in leadership, innovation, and systems thinking; and
effective collaboration with SDM staff, fellow students, and alumni.

This year's winner, Wilfredo "Alex" Sanchez, received a cash prize. He was honored for numerous contributions, including:

serving as chair of SDM's Student Leadership Council;
coordinating logistics for the MIT Career Fair attended by 6,000 students—including contracting, catering, mail service, hotels, and parking for 400 organizations and 1,500 human resources representatives as well as corresponding with 400 organizations to raise SDM's visibility in advance of the event;
assisting with SDM Silicon Valley Tech Trek outreach and recruitment efforts; and
fostering an environment of inclusion for all SDM fellows by serving as an active member of Sloan LGBT, participating in an LGBT panel during fall 2013 Sloan Innovation Period, and meeting with Sloan LGBT AdMITs during campus visits.
Suzanne Livingston
Photo by Dave Schultz

Finalists for the award included SDM '13s Suzanne Livingston and Marianna Novellino. Both were cited for several significant contributions, including serving as key members of WiSDM (Women in SDM) and cofounding (with others) the MIT Product Management Club (PMC).
Since its founding in spring semester, 2013, the PMC:

grew from fewer than 20 members to over 300;
offered meetings and workshops for students with experts from Microsoft, LuckyLabs, Google, Cisco, Yelp, the venture capitalist community, and product management educator John Mansour;
created a highly attended (80+ students) mock interview event that brought experienced project managers from Google, IBM, Akamai, and others to MIT to help students sharpen interviewing skills;
became the first SDM-initiated club to be recognized by Sloan, which provides significant funding and marketing opportunities;
established a partnership between MIT and the Boston Product Management Association (BPMA), enabling all MIT students to attend BPMA events and recruiting sessions at reduced membership rates.
Marianna Novellino
Photo by Dave Schultz

In addition, Novellino:

Served as managing director of MIT's 2014 Sustainability Summit and as a panel coordinator for the 2013 Sustainability Summit;
Helped coordinate 32 events during 2013 as a member of the SDM Student Life Committee; and
Currently works on water supply systems in rural communities in India as a Tata Fellow.

Congratulations and thank you to all!

Charles Iheagwara, SDM '10: Cybersecurity Breach at University of Maryland

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 01:48:00 +0000

Charles Iheagwara

SDM alumnus and cybersecurity expert Charles Iheagwara, Ph.D., was recently interviewed about a serious data breach at the University of Maryland. View the video segment here.

Sagini Ramesh, SDM '14: Gaining Engineering and Management Skills to Help Others

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 02:17:00 +0000

By Kathryn O'Neill, MIT SDM Correspondent

Sagini Ramesh, SDM '14
Photo by Dave Schultz

As a volunteer in tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka, Sagini Ramesh, SDM '14, saw firsthand what it's like to live without easy access to technology. That's why her goal in attending MIT's SDM master's program is to gain the engineering and management skills she needs to help those less fortunate.

"I looked at SDM and I thought: Yes, it can help my career, but it can really help me help other people. And that was key," said Ramesh, who hopes one day to build a consulting practice providing technology to developing countries. "SDM will give me the knowledge, background, and connections to do that."

A native of Sri Lanka, Ramesh escaped the island's civil war with her family when she was just 5 years old. She returned for the first time as a college student following the 2004 tsunami and discovered a country very different from Canada, where she grew up. "It was a culture shock," she said. "The northeast section where I was didn't have grid electricity—they had to use generators. There were no cellphone networks and no Internet."

Ramesh had volunteered to rebuild houses, but she found her programming skills were in higher demand. So, she helped construct an ambulance tracking and medical records system for a local hospital. "This was first time I felt I worked on something meaningful," she said, noting that the experience opened her eyes to the advantages of a career in software. "We take a lot of things for granted growing up in North America."

Ramesh graduated from Waterloo University and went on to work as a software engineer for Vistaprint. She is currently a senior project manager for Vistaprint's global customer service centers. She planned to attend graduate school, but initially she was unsure whether to pursue engineering or management. "I loved working with people from diverse backgrounds, strategizing and managing projects, but when I looked at an MBA, it honestly wasn't so appealing to me," she said. "I am an engineer at heart: I want to understand how things work and how they come together, and have the technical aptitude to be able to design and innovate."

Then she heard about SDM, which combines management and engineering. "I looked at it and said, 'Wow, this is perfect.'"

Ramesh started in January and has already put several lessons to use from her initial SDM projects. For example, a design challenge given to the cohort provided her with benchmarking experience she can directly apply at work. "I picked up skills I'll be using the next time I select vendors," she said.

Meanwhile, Ramesh is advancing her long-term goals by taking a class in Humanitarian Logistics that centers on how to move materials into areas of need. "This is what I eventually want to do, so I'm learning how the supply chain works," she said.

She is also benefiting from SDM's emphasis on team-building skills. "That's very different from typical school, which is so competitive," she said. "[Here] you simultaneously learn from, and educate, each other.

It's a familiar model for Ramesh. Raised by a single mother, Ramesh learned the value of education early as her mother worked factory jobs to put her and her sister through college. Ramesh, in turn, helped put her younger sister through medical school. And now, her mother is helping Ramesh and her husband—Ramesh* Sundralingam, a lab technician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center—care for their 3-year-old son, Ellalan, so Ramesh can attend SDM.

Sagini Ramesh, SDM '14, with her mother, son, and husband.

"I wouldn't be where I am without Amma [Mom]," she said. "She's the biggest reason I could go back to grad school and work a full-time, demanding job."

* In the Tamil Sri Lankan tradition, wives take their husbands' first names as their last names.

George Clernon, SDM '14: Applying Systems Thinking at Analog Devices

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 02:13:00 +0000

By Kathryn O'Neill, MIT SDM Correspondent

George Clernon, SDM '14
Photo by Dave Schultz

A native of Ireland, George Clernon, SDM '14, began looking for a graduate program several years ago that would combine systems thinking with advanced engineering and a management curriculum—but it wasn't until after he moved to Boston that he found what he wanted in MIT's SDM master's program.

While he considered other U.S. options, his employer ultimately tipped the scales toward SDM. "My director had experience with SDM, and he said the MIT program was much better from a company point of view—it was much more aligned with what we needed to do," said Clernon, whose enrollment is sponsored by Analog Devices.

George Clernon, SDM '14, mans a booth at Analog
Devices' Design Conference 2013 in Frankfurt, Germany.
Photo by Melanie Huber

Initially, he admits he doubted SDM could live up to its exceptional reputation. "At one of the information sessions someone said they were applying what they learned every day at work," he said. "I was pretty skeptical about that."

Just two months into the program, however, he's a believer. "I regret my skepticism," said Clernon, who works as an engineering tools manager in Analog Devices' core markets and marketing division. "There's an ongoing application of learning as I come back to my day-to-day work."

During SDM's month-long on-campus "boot camp" in January, for example, he took a class called the Human Side of Technology and learned the importance of putting emotions aside to focus on the problem at hand. "Even in engineering, which is fact-based, people's personalities come into play," he said, explaining that people tend to become attached to their own ideas. "When you put emotions in the equation, you start making decisions about the emotion rather than about the facts."

Clernon said he is looking forward to gaining additional insights from his spring courses, particularly Technology Strategy, which provides strategic frameworks for managing high-technology businesses. "Analog Devices is No. 1 in analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters and has been for a long time," Clernon said. So, he hopes Technology Strategy will help him answer the question: "How do we develop new technology to be a disruptive force so we can retain our position?"

Currently, Clernon is endeavoring to develop a platform that will provide Analog's core customers with online engineering tools to support the company's 10,000-plus products. "We have so many products going to so many customers, there's a strong need for a more systems-based approach," he said. "SDM is helping me further that solution and move it along at a better pace."

After 16 years with the same company, Clernon said he particularly values the opportunity SDM has given him to work with people from a wide range of industries. "One thing about coming to SDM is that it's a great way to make yourself uncomfortable—not in a bad way but in a challenging way," he said. "I'm working with different people and organizations and it's inspiring."

When he's not studying, working, or taking classes, Clernon said he's likely to be found playing with his 14-month-old son, Eoin, who loves Legos, and enjoying time with his wife, Cherry, who recently started her own baking business, Cherry With a Cake on Top. How does he manage it all? "I've just realized how much free time I had before that I was misusing," he said.

Christopher Choo, SDM '14: From the Singapore Grand Prix to MIT

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 18:43:00 +0000

Christopher Choo,
SDM '14

By Lois Slavin, MIT SDM Communications Director

It's been said that the best achievement is striving to surpass yourself, and that's something SDM '14 Christopher Choo knows a lot about. After several successful years working for the Formula One Singapore Grand Prix, the "next big thing" for Choo involves moving from the Far East to Cambridge, MA, then back to Singapore to earn two master's degrees in about two years.

Choo arrived in the United States in January 2014 to matriculate into the MIT–Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) Dual Masters' Program. The program offers outstanding individuals the chance to maximize their potential in the fields of technology and design. Successful applicants receive a range of benefits, including a full tuition scholarship to both the SDM and SUTD programs, a monthly stipend, round-trip airfare between the United States and Singapore, and more.

Choo will first spend one year at SDM completing the requirements for an MIT master's degree in engineering and management, followed by one year at SUTD to earn a master's of engineering degree in research.

Why would someone who already holds one advanced degree (a master's in computing from the National University of Singapore) want to pursue two more—especially when he already has such a fulfilling and exciting career?

Choo summed it up in three words: "acquiring new knowledge." He then elaborated: "SDM is ideal for someone like me who has varied interests across both engineering and management disciplines. Being plugged into the rigor of a full-time program in MIT's world-class university environment and an SDM cohort whose members have worked in different industries, in various engineering and technical positions, will be a great way to absorb cutting-edge knowledge fast."

Speed is one of Choo's specialties, thanks to four years spent working with the Formula One Singapore Grand Prix. There he was responsible for race circuit infrastructure, track lighting, civil works, telecommunications, site electrical, on-site broadcasting, and logistics services. He worked with technical consultants to develop client requirements, review project specifications, and procure equipment and services. He also developed plans with government agencies regarding infrastructure, traffic management, radio frequency allocation, and aerial filming operations. Previously, Choo worked with the Singapore Tourism Board, which laid the groundwork for his Formula One foray. In total, he's been involved in various capacities in six Singapore Grand Prix races.

SDM '14 Chris Choo in the control room of the Singapore Grand Prix

Upon completing the dual degree program Choo said he may return to the Grand Prix or he may decide—after researching and writing two theses in two years—that he wants to switch gears and try something new. "I believe that both degrees will help me develop a broader foundation in engineering and management that will lead to exciting prospects in future," said Choo.

Whatever he decides, one thing's for sure—Choo will be looking to surpass himself once again.

SDM Announces New Admissions Deadlines, Core Curriculum for Fall 2014 Matriculation

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 04:11:00 +0000

By Lois Slavin, MIT SDM Communications Director

In 2014, the MIT System Design and Management (SDM) program will initiate significant academic and operational innovations that will better meet the needs of industry and our students, specifically:

Beginning in August 2014, all of SDM's cohort-building on-campus "boot camps" will be held immediately before the start of the fall semester. This operational change from running "boot camps" in January was made to give SDM students the opportunity to matriculate as a cohort in the fall semester when most other new students arrive at MIT. This will enable SDMs to foster relationships with a wider number of their peers across the Institute. SDM's new admissions calendar for August 2014 is available here.
SDM's core curriculum in system architecture, systems engineering, and system and project management will evolve. Beginning in fall 2014, these three courses will be integrated into a single "SDM Core" course offered over the fall and spring semesters and taught by a team of SDM faculty. This effort is being led by Professor Olivier de Weck and a team of key stakeholders, including faculty, alumni, and industry sponsors. The intent is to provide a more integrated approach to systems engineering processes as applied in real time across multiple industry domains.
Required courses that were formerly taught in the summer will be moved to other terms to accommodate the growing interest in summer internships.

"Successful organizations know that it's not just short-sighted but dangerous to rest on their laurels. Whether it's IBM or SDM, no matter what the industry, the key to success is innovation," said SDM Executive Director Pat Hale. "All of us here at SDM are excited about these innovations because they will help the program continue to serve students and industry."

SDM Innovates Academic Core, Calendar

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 02:30:00 +0000

By Pat Hale, MIT SDM Executive Director

Pat Hale

All successful organizations know that it's not just risky but dangerous to rest on their laurels. Whether it's IBM or SDM, no matter what the industry, the key to success is innovation.

This is especially true at MIT, where some of the world's leading thinkers set the pace for leadership, innovation, and systems thinking. For example:

Professors Ed Crawley and Tom Magnanti developed and designed SDM in response to industry's need to educate future leaders in 1996;
SDM has since led the Institute in developing a career-and-family-compatible degree-granting graduate program; and
SDM is jointly offered by the MIT School of Engineering and MIT Sloan School of Management and offers an interdisciplinary master's degree in engineering and management.

A testament to SDM's success is the fact that similar programs have been formed in Japan, Mexico, and other countries around the world.

Over the past 17+ years, SDM has continued to evolve and innovate to provide:

full-time, part-time, and distance options; and
an ever-widening range of academic offerings.

However, there's more.

In 2014, SDM will initate significant academic and operational innovations that will better meet the needs of industry and our students. For example:

Beginning in August, all of SDM's cohort-building on-campus "boot camps" will be held immediately before the start of the fall semester. The last traditional boot camp will run this coming January, and another will be offered in August for the 2014 cohort that will matriculate that month. This operational change was made to give SDM students the opportunity to matriculate as a cohort in the fall semester when most other new students arrive at the Institute. This will enable SDMs to foster relationships with a wider number of their peers across MIT.
SDM's core curriculum in system architecture, systems engineering, and system and project management will evolve. Beginning in fall 2014, these three separate courses will be integrated into a single "SDM Core" course offered over the fall and spring semesters and taught by a team of SDM faculty. This effort is being led by Professor Olivier de Weck and a team of key stakeholders, including faculty, alumni, and industry sponsors. The intent is to provide a more integrated approach to systems engineering processes as applied in real-time across multiple industry domains.

All of us here at SDM are excited about these changes because we believe they will help the program continue to serve students and industry by offering education at the cutting edge of engineering and management, combined with leadership, innovation, and systems thinking. We look forward to celebrating these milestones as we continue our work to ensure SDM is the world's premier program of its kind.

Jillian Wisniewski, SDM '14: Systems Engineering, Operations Research, the US Army, and Two Kids

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 02:01:00 +0000

By Lois Slavin, MIT SDM Communications Director

Jillian Wisniewski,
SDM '14

She's a US Army captain who earned a Bronze Star, a wife, a mother, and now an SDM student. Her name is Jillian Wisniewski.

A 2006 graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, where she earned an undergraduate degree in operations research (OR), Wisniewski chose to apply to MIT's SDM master's program because it offers technical depth, management breadth, and leadership skills through MIT's No. 1 rated School of Engineering and its top business school, MIT Sloan. "I felt that an SDM education would enable me not only to apply systems engineering and OR concepts, but to effectively communicate those concepts to my future students as well," she said.

US Army Capt. Jill Wisniewski and colleagues in Afghanistan

Future students? Yes. After Wisniewski earns her MIT MS in engineering and management, adding "SDM graduate" to her list of accomplishments, she will also put "faculty member at West Point" on her resume, following in the footsteps of SDM alumni Nathan Minami, Kristina Richardson, and Joshua Eaton. She is slated to teach systems engineering during a three-year assignment, spending one of those years at the Army's Operations Research Center.

"SDM will help me achieve my longer-term goals as well," she said, noting her plans to help significantly change the Army's education for military intelligence analysts at user, operational, and strategic levels. "Intelligence personnel must sift through hundreds, if not thousands of data points to make sense of adversaries' actions, yet they receive no training in basic data analysis," she explained. "Too often this results in misinterpretation and errors.

"So far I have been able to effect some change on a local level, but I would like to have a larger impact on the branch itself," she continued. "I believe that my SDM education, combined with teaching systems engineering and working at the Army's Operations Research Center, will give me a solid platform to research, develop, and implement real solutions on a larger scale over the long term."

While Wisniewski is studying at SDM, her husband, Isaac Jahn, is attending the MBA program at Harvard Business School. High school sweethearts, they both attended West Point and served together in the United States and Afghanistan. Their oldest child, Anna, now 6, was born during their first assignment together at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. When both were deployed to Afghanistan, which is where Wisniewski received a Bronze Star for exceptional service as a squadron intelligence officer, Anna stayed in the United States with her paternal grandparents. The couple now also has a son, Isaac Edward, who is almost 2.

After managing to handle war-time deployment, Wisniewski said she is looking forward to a different type of adventure at MIT. "This is an experience that I am proud to share with my family. I am confident that the rigors of academics at MIT will provide a new set of challenges that will help us grow even stronger together and will ultimately enhance my contribution to the military."

Security Threats in Integrated Circuits

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 01:04:00 +0000

By Asif Iqbal, SDM '11

Asif Iqbal, SDM '11

With the ubiquity of embedded processors in almost everything, security has become a matter of grave concern. Digital hardware-software-based platforms are increasingly deployed in military, financial systems, and other critical infrastructures like smart grid, healthcare, public records, etc. These platforms have always been at high risk and have been historically compromised by myriad software and social engineering attacks. Adversaries have been exploiting the Internet and the "connected world" at will. There have been numerous cases and significant published literature showing that creative software techniques can sneak through the crevices of modern software systems. With the current available tools, such software threats are increasing; however, the sophistication of the hackers is on the rise.^[i] At the same time, we are well aware of these hacks, and software security is a mature field of study. The figure below shows how software-related hacks have grown in sophistication over the years.

Fig 1. Evolution of cyber-security threats over time^[ii]
So, what's the next big thing in cyber security—the ultimate level of sophistication, the unthinkable destructive impact, and the crack in the backbone? The following short excerpt from an article in IEEE Spectrum^[iii] builds context for the discussions to follow.

September 2007—Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear installation in northeastern Syria. Among the many mysteries still surrounding that strike was the failure of Syrian radar, supposedly state of the art, to warn the Syrian military of the incoming assault. It wasn't long before military and technology bloggers concluded that this was an incident of electronic warfare and not just any kind. Post after post speculated that the commercial off-the-shelf microprocessors in the Syrian radar might have been purposely fabricated with a hidden "back door" inside. By sending a preprogrammed code to those chips, an unknown antagonist had disrupted the chips' function and temporarily blocked the radar.

The above example was a case of an infected integrated circuit (IC) leaking information, a Type II attack that will be discussed later. If we think of the case mentioned above, the damage was the leak of information. However, thinking this through more deeply, it could have easily been a "kill switch" (Type III attack) with the potential to detonate the missile in the carrier jet or a Type IV attack capable of changing the target's location. This is an infection at the most fundamental level, difficult to detect, incurable, and potentially destructive not only to finance and global resources, but also to human life.

Recently there have been numerous media reports that confirm this. For years, fake and infected ICs have been deeply infiltrating military warfare systems. With embedded smart processors handling data of increasing value, such as consumer banking credentials, security of other critical infrastructures is at risk. There are additional case studies noted in the appendix.

In response to this threat, hardware security has started to emerge as an important research topic. In the current literature, the agent for malicious tampering is referred to as a hardware Trojan horse (HTH). An HTH causes an integrated circuit to malfunction to perform some additional malicious functions along with the intended one(s). Conventional design-time verification and post-manufacturing testing cannot readily be extended to detect HTHs due to their stealth nature, inordinately large number of possible instances, and large variety of structures and operating modes.

An HTH can be designed to disable or destroy a system at some future time, or to leak confidential information and secret keys covertly to the adversary^[iv]. Trojans can be implemented as hardware modifications to microprocessors, digital signal processors (DSP), application-specific ICs (ASIC) and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts. They can also be implemented as FPGA bit streams^[v].

This paper borrows theoretical concepts and design examples from current research literature and my prior experience in circuit design. To build a theoretical context, I will start with the definition of hardware security and explain the intent of a secure hardware design. Building on this concept, I will expose threats posed by HTHs and methods for detecting them. Types of attacks with associated agents will be discussed. In the latter half of this paper, taxonomy is also presented along with design examples for a few classes.

What Is Hardware Security?

In abstract terms, the word "security" can be used to cover several very different underlying features of a design. Every system design will require a different set of security properties, depending on the type and value of the assets or the resource worth protecting; security is about trying to defend against malicious attack.

A property of the system that ensures that resources of value cannot be copied, damaged, or made unavailable to genuine users.

The fundamental security properties on which nearly every higher-level property can be based are those of confidentiality and integrity.

Confidentiality

An asset that is confidential cannot be copied or stolen by a defined set of attacks. This property is essential for assets such as passwords and cryptographic keys.

Integrity

An asset that has its integrity assured is defended against modification by a known set of attacks. This property is essential for some of the on-chip root secrets (keys, encryption algorithms) on which the rest of the system's security is based.

Authenticity

In some circumstances, a design cannot provide integrity and instead provides the property of authenticity. In this case, an attacker can change the value of the asset, but the defender will be able to detect the change (by verifying authenticity) before the chip function is compromised. In some implementations, the chip may cease to function in the event of tampering.

Types of Attacks

IC security issues are mainly attributed or at least traced back to the physical security of the design or manufacturing facilities. Different mechanisms for performing attacks are broken down into four classes: hack attacks, shack attacks, lab attacks, and fab attacks.

Hack Attack

A hack attack is one where the hacker is only capable of executing a software attack. Examples include viruses and malware, which are downloaded to the device via a physical or a wireless connection. In many cases of a successful hack attack, the device user inadvertently approves the installation of the software, which then executes the attack. This is either because the malware pretends to be a piece of software that the user actually wants to install or because the user does not understand the warning messages displayed by the operating environment.

Shack Attack

A shack attack is a low-budget hardware attack using equipment that could be bought from a store like Radio Shack. In this scenario, attackers have physical access to the device, but not enough equipment or expertise to attack within the integrated circuit packages. They can use logic probes and network analyzers to snoop bus lines, pins, and system signals. They may be able to perform simple active hardware attacks, such as forcing pins and bus lines to be at a high or low voltage, reprogramming memory devices, or replacing hardware components with malicious alternatives. Some of the existing IC testability features, such as JTAG debug, boundary scan I/O, and BIST (built-in self-test) facilities, can be used to hack a chip's functional state.

Lab Attack

The lab attack is more comprehensive and invasive. If attackers have access to laboratory equipment, such as electron microscopes, they can perform unlimited reverse engineering of the device. It must be assumed that attackers can reverse engineer transistor-level detail for any sensitive part of the design, including logic and memory. Attackers can reverse engineer a design, attach microscopic logic probes to silicon metal layers, and introduce glitches into a running circuit using lasers or other techniques. They can also monitor analog signals, such as device power usage and electromagnetic emissions, to perform attacks such as cryptographic key analysis.

Fab Attack

A fab attack is the lowest level of attack wherein malicious code is inserted into the net list or layout of an integrated circuit in the foundry or fabrication plant. Circuitry fabricated in the chip cannot be easily detected by chip validation.

Trust in Integrated Circuits

Security in integrated circuit design and manufacture is the final line of defense for securing hardware systems. Because of the fabless business model, third-party IP reuse, and untrusted manufacturing of the semiconductor industry, ICs are becoming increasingly vulnerable to malicious activities and alterations.^[vi] ^[vii] These concerns have caused the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to initiate the Trust in ICs program.^[viii]
An IC product development process contains three major steps and agents: design, fabrication, and test and validation. These steps are pictorially represented below along with their trust levels. An untrusted agent is a potential source of infection. IC security is more of a physical security issue, which can be held in check by tight control and vertical integration over the complete manufacturing process.

Fig 2. Trusted and untrusted components of design and manufacturing chain

Design

Specification

Design starts with specifications wherein alterations can be made to modify the functions and protocols or design constraints. This is considered to be a trusted component and insider attack is very unlikely. From my research to date, no cases have been reported; however, the possibility cannot be negated.

Third-party IPs and Libraries

Due to the ever-increasing complexity of designs and time-to-market constraints, high reuse is prevalent in the IC industry. This includes third-party soft/firm/hard IP blocks, models, and standard cells used by the designer during the design process and by the foundry during the post-design processes. These third-party IPs and libraries are considered untrusted.

CAD Tools

Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Magma, and Synopsys provide the industry-standard CAD tools for design. These tools are considered trusted. However, from my personal experience and interviews, design engineers have been using untrusted third-party TCL^[ix] scripts (open source or proprietary) on trusted CAD software for design automation even in big design houses.

Fabrication

Fabrication involves preparing masks and wafers, which is an integrated manufacturing process of oxidation, diffusion, ion implantation, chemical vapor decomposition, metallization, and lithography. In the present context, with fabrication being outsourced to the third-party foundries, trust is in question. The adversary could change the parameters of the manufacturing process, geometries of the mask, or even embed a malicious circuit at the mask layout level. The mask information is contained in an electronic file format called GDS. Entire mask sets may be replaced by replacing the GDS and the adversary could substitute a compromised Trojan IC mask for the genuine one.^[x]

Manufacturing Test

In the testing phase, test vectors are applied to the inputs of the manufactured IC, and output ports are monitored for expected behavior. Generally, the automated test equipment fails to detect a Trojan. However, test vectors or automated test equipment can be constructed to mask Trojans. Hence testing would be considered trusted only if it is done in the production test center of the client (semiconductor company or government agency).

Fig.3. Vulnerable steps of modern IC life cycle [Source: R.S. Chakraborty et al.]

Design Abstraction Levels

Trojan circuits can be embedded at various hardware abstraction levels. As we move to a lower abstraction level, the level of sophistication required increases, i.e. it is more difficult to embed a desired malicious functionality into lower levels of abstraction, as compared to higher levels.

The netlist or the gate level of a design is considered to be secure and must not be tampered with by hand. It is interesting to note that changes are made directly in the netlist or gate level at late design stages for legitimate purposes. An experienced engineer can insert a malicious circuit directly in the gate level.

The different levels of abstraction at which design is done and a Trojan may be inserted are listed below.

At the system level in different hardware modules and interconnection and communication protocols. This requires a low level of sophistication.
At the register transfer level (RTL), a Trojan can be inserted by coding its behavioral description along with the intended functionality of the chip. This is difficult in terms of physical access, but low in complexity of attack.
At the gate level a hacker can carefully control all aspects of the inserted Trojan, including size and location. Physical access is difficult and the hack is complicated.
At the transistor level, hacks are related to changing circuit parameters to compromise the reliability of the chip and cause ultimate mission mode failure. This is a very sophisticated attack, still in the trusted zone with difficult physical access.
At the layout level, hacks are related to foundry attacks and physical access is easier because of the untrusted zone. However, this hack has the highest level of sophistication.

Ensuring Authenticity

There are two main options to ensure that a chip used by a client is authentic, meaning it performs only those functions originally intended and nothing more. They are:

Make the entire fabrication process trusted.
Verify the trustworthiness of manufactured chips upon return to the clients.

While the first option is expensive and nearly impossible considering the current business climate and trends in the global distribution of the IC design and fabrication, the second option requires tightly controlling testing and validation to ensure the chip's conformance with the original functional and performance specifications. Tehranipoor et al.^[xi] call this new step silicon design authentication.

Deep Dive into Hardware Trojans

Hardware Trojans are modifications to original circuitry that are inserted by adversaries who have the malicious intent of using hardware or hardware mechanisms to gain access to data or software running on the chips. The example in Figure 4 shows cryptographic hardware with the output bypassed with a simple multiplexer. When the select line is high, the unencrypted input is sent to the output. The multiplexer is the Trojan here, which when activated by a trigger alters the intended functionality and sends the unencrypted data to the adversary.

Fig. 4. A simple Trojan [Source: J Rajendran et al.]

An interesting point to note here is that bypass structures like the one in Figure 4 are used routinely in design for debug and design for testability (DFT).^[xii] It is very difficult to distinguish such modifications and detect this type of Trojan, which may be disguised as a normal debug function. There are many other characteristics of a hardware Trojan, such as small area and rare trigger, which make it difficult to detect. Hardware Trojan detection is still a fairly new research area, but it has gained significant traction in the past few years.

Difficulty of Detection

Detection of malicious alterations is extremely difficult, for several reasons.

Reuse. There is a great deal of third-party soft or hard Internet Protocol (IP) integration in ICs to accelerate the time to market. The IPs are getting increasingly small and detecting a small malicious alteration in a third-party IP is extremely difficult.
Small Size. Small, submicron, IC feature sizes make detection by physical inspection and destructive reverse engineering very difficult and costly. Moreover, destructive reverse engineering does not guarantee a comprehensive test, especially when Trojans are dispersed throughout the entire chip.
Low Activation Probability: Trojan circuits, by design, are activated under very specific low probability conditions, such as sensing a specific low-frequency toggling design signal or such analog parameters as power or temperature. This makes them unlikely to be activated and detected using random or functional stimuli during limited test times, but more easily triggered during the mission mode.
Insufficient Manufacturing Tests. Tests of manufacturing faults, such as stuck-at and delay faults, cannot guarantee detection of Trojans. Such tests are limited by test times, which are typically a few milliseconds per chip. Within this time frame, they cannot activate and detect Trojans. Even when 100 percent fault coverage for all types of manufacturing faults is possible, there are no guarantees as far as Trojans are concerned, since all functional use cases and state vectors are not exercised.
Decreasing Physical Geometry: Devices are getting smaller each day because of improvements in lithography. As physical feature sizes decrease, process (PVT) and environmental variations have a greater impact on the integrity of the circuit parameters (voltages, current, power, and I/O delay). This makes parametric detection of Trojans using simple measurement of signals ineffective.

Taxonomy of Trojans

Wang, Tehranipoor, and Plusquellic^[xiii] developed a detailed taxonomy for hardware Trojans. Wang et al. suggest three main categories of Trojans according to their physical, activation, and action characteristics. Although Trojans could be hybrids of this classification (for instance, they could have more than one activation characteristic), this taxonomy captures the elemental characteristics of Trojans and is useful for defining and evaluating the capabilities of various detection strategies.

Fig. 5. Detailed taxonomy of hardware Trojans [Source: Wang et al.]^[xiii]

Physical Characteristics

The physical category describes the various hardware manifestations of Trojans. This type of category partitions Trojans into functional and parametric classes. The functional class includes Trojans that are physically realized through the addition or deletion of transistors or gates, whereas the parametric class refers to Trojans that are realized through modifications of existing wires and logic.

The size category accounts for the number of components in the chip that have been added, deleted, or compromised. The distribution category describes the location of the Trojan in the chip's physical layout. The structure category refers to the case when an adversary is forced to regenerate the layout to insert a Trojan, which could then cause the chip's physical form to change. Such changes could result in different placement for some or all design components. Any malicious changes in physical layout that could change the chip's delay and power characteristics would facilitate Trojan detection.

Trigger Characteristics

Trojans can also be classified based on their activation or trigger characteristics. A Trojan consists of a trigger and a payload. The trigger function causes the payload to be active and carry out its malicious function. Once activated, the Trojan may continue to be in an activated state or return to its base state (one-shot activation). These triggers are further divided into two categories, externally activated and internally triggered.

Externally triggered Trojans require external inputs to act. The external trigger can be an adversary input or a legitimate user input or even a lab component's output. User input triggers may include push buttons, switches, keyboards, or keywords/phrases in the input data stream. An external component trigger could be a signal that is received by an antenna or sensor and triggers a payload inside the circuit. The activation condition could be based on the output of a sensor that monitors temperature, voltage, or any type of external environmental condition (such as electromagnetic interference, humidity, or altitude).

An internally triggered Trojan is activated by an event that occurs within the target device. The event may be either time–based or physical condition–based. Common methods include hardware counters, which can trigger the Trojan at a predetermined time. These are also called time bombs. Triggering circuitry may monitor physical parameters such as temperature and power consumption of the target device. When these parameters reach a predetermined value, they trigger the Trojan. The Trojan in this case is implemented by adding logic gates and/or flip-flops to the chip, and hence is represented as a combinational or sequential circuit. Action characteristics identify the types of disruptive behavior introduced by the Trojan.

"Always On" Trigger

The "always on" trigger keeps the Trojan active, continuously deteriorating the chip's performance. This trigger can disrupt the chip's normal reliability and function at any time. This subclass covers Trojans that are implemented by modifying the chip's geometries such that certain nodes or paths have a higher susceptibility to failure.

Another classification of Trojan based on triggers is done by Chakraborty et al.^[xiii] Based on this classification, trigger mechanisms can be of two types: digital and analog.

Fig. 6. Classification of triggers based on digital/analog mechanisms^[xiii]
Analog-triggered Trojans are based on detection methods of chip power or current levels. Digital-triggered Trojans can again be classified into combinational and sequential types. A combinational trigger is a logic function of internal circuit state variables. Typically, an attacker would choose a rare activation condition so that it is very unlikely for the Trojan to trigger during a conventional manufacturing test. On the other hand, sequentially triggered Trojans are activated by the occurrence of a sequence, or a period of continuous operation. The simplest sequential Trojan triggers are synchronous stand-alone counters, which trigger a malfunction on reaching a particular count. In general, detecting sequential Trojans is more difficult because the activation probability is lower due to the content and timing variables. Additionally, the number of such sequential trigger conditions for arbitrary Trojan instances can be insurmountably large for a deterministic logic testing approach, making testing and detection impractical.

Fig. 7. Example of Trojans with trigger mechanisms [Source: R.S Chakraborty et.al]^[xiv]
Payload/Effect-based Classification
Payload consists of the circuitry designed for the intended functionality. Payload can characterize a Trojan by the severity of the effect. A Trojan can change the function of the target device and can cause errors that may be difficult to detect in testing but are detrimental in mission mode. Another class of Trojans can change specifications by changing device parameters. They may change the reliability, functional, or parametric specifications (such as power and delay). Trojans can also leak sensitive information through a secret or already existing channel. Information can be leaked by radio frequency, optical and thermal means, and via interfaces such as RS 232 and JTAG. Trojan can also be designed to create backdoor access to assist in software-based attacks like privilege escalation and password theft. Trojans can hog chip resources, including bandwidth, computation, and battery power, causing the chip to malfunction, emulating a denial of service. Some Trojans may physically destroy, disable, or alter the configuration of the device (kill switches).

Another way to categorize Trojans is based on the type of circuitry: digital and analog. Digital Trojans can either affect the logic values at chosen internal nodes, or can modify the contents of memory locations. Analog payload Trojans, on the other hand, affect circuit parameters, such as performance, power, and noise margin. Another form of analog payload would be generation of excess activity in the circuit and accelerating the aging process of an IC and shortening its lifespan. All this happens without affecting the IC functionality.

Current Trojan Detection Methods

Detection of Trojans is extremely difficult for the reasons discussed in the previous sections. It is an important area of research that has led to the development of some Trojan detection methods over the past few years. These are categorized mainly as chip-level solutions and architectural-level Trojan detection solutions.

Chip-level Methods

Power and Current Measurement

Trojans typically change a design's parametric characteristic by, for example, hampering performance, increasing or decreasing power, or causing reliability problems in the chip. Measuring current and voltage can provide information about the internal structure and activities within the IC, enabling detection of Trojans without fully activating them.

A weakness of such methods is that a Trojan can draw only a very small amount of current and that it could be submerged below the noise floor and process variation effects, thus making it undetectable by conventional measurement equipment. However, Trojan detection capability can be greatly enhanced by measuring current locally and from multiple power ports or pads, switching off certain sections of the chip, and thus increasing the small differential of voltage or current with respect to the normal operating parameters.

Timing-based Methods

In timing-based methods, Trojans can be detected by measuring the delays between a circuit's inputs and outputs. Trojans can be detected when one or a group of path delays are extended beyond the threshold determined by the process variations level.

Many different samples from a process lot are checked under the same test patterns and compared. An outlier is a suspect of Trojan infection. This method uses statistical analysis to deal with process variations. However, it is not suitable for today's complex circuits, which contain millions of paths between inputs and output. Measuring all these paths, especially the short ones, is not easy.

Architecture-level Trojan Detection

An attack can occur at different levels of design abstraction, for example at the specification, RTL, gate level, or post-layout level. At the most abstract level, the adversary can access the interpreter and perform software tampering, scan-chain readout, or a fault attack. At the hardware microarchitecture and circuit levels, the attacker takes into account power energy consumption or electromagnetic energy. As we ascend to an upper level of abstraction, the required sophistication of the attacking agent decreases and detectability of the Trojan decreases. This is because the automated synthesis and automated place and route process distribute the logic all over the chip area.

Design for Trust

One approach is to design chips for detectability of any tampering. The CAD and test community has long benefited from Design for Testability (DFT) and Design for Manufacturability (DFM). Design for Trust is another "ility" that is critical for Trojan detection. These design methods, proposed by the hardware security and trust community, improve Trojan detection and isolation by changing or modifying the design flow. They help prevent insertion of Trojans, facilitate easier detection, and provide effective IC authentication.
Some methods are physical-level tamper-proofing techniques, such as placing security parts into special casings with light, temperature, tampering, or motion sensors.

Suh, Deng, and Chan et al.^[xv] have proposed a design-level tamper-proofing method. In their paper, they discuss an encryption microarchitecture featuring a high-end secure microprocessor. A secure processor is authenticated by a checksum response to a challenge within a time limit. The unique checksum is based on the cycle-to-cycle activities of the processor's specific internal micro-architectural mechanism. The authors showed that small differences in the crypto-architecture result in significant deviations in the checksum.
The architectural detection methods are specific and have to be built into the design for easy tamper detectability. The chip-level methods are too high-precision and error-prone because it is so difficult to identify a trigger in the presence of chip noise and process variation.

Conclusion

The issue of IC security and effective countermeasures has drawn considerable research interest in recent times. This paper presents a survey of different Trojan types and emerging methods of detection. Analog Trojans present a major future challenge because there are numerous types of activation and observation conditions. Considering the varied nature and types of IC vulnerabilities, a combination of design and test methods would be required to provide an acceptable level of security.

Designs are inherently made secure each day. However, the hacker is always one step ahead!! Engineers are reacting to changing security needs. They are proactively designing in "trust-ability" and making designs more secure, but physical access is something beyond the control of the academic and engineering communities. Businesses have to be aware and procurement policies have to be improved. The threats to IC security are more severe in regards to physical security. Vertical integration of the entire manufacturing chain would bring up trust in the manufacturing process, enabling many Trojans to be controlled.

Appendix: Short Cases of IC Vulnerability^[xvi]

The sensitive assets that each market sector tries to protect against attack are diverse. For example, mobile handsets aim to protect the integrity of radio networks, while television set-top boxes prevent unauthorized access to subscription channels. The varied type and value of the assets being protected, combined with the different underlying system implementations, mean that the attacks experienced by each also vary.

Mobile Sector

Two critical parts of a GSM handset are the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) code, a unique 15-digit code used to identify an individual handset when it connects to the network, and the low-level SIMLock protocol that is used to bind a particular device to SIM cards of a particular network operator.
Both of these components are used to provide a security feature: the IMEI is used to block stolen handsets from accessing a network, and the SIMLock protocol is used to tie the device to the operator for a contract's duration. On many handsets both of these protection mechanisms can be bypassed with little effort, typically using a USB cable and a reprogramming tool running on a desktop workstation.
The result of these insecurities in the implementation is an opportunity for fraud to be committed on such a large scale that statistics reported by Reuters UK suggest it is driving half of all street crime through mobile phone thefts, costing the industry billions of dollars every year.

Security requirements placed on new mobile devices no longer relate only to the network, but also to content and services available on the device. Protection of digital media content through Digital Rights Management (DRM) and protection of confidential user data, such as synchronized email accounts, is becoming critical as both operators and users try to obtain more value from their devices.

Consumer Electronics and Embedded Sector

The requirements placed on consumer electronics, such as portable game consoles and home movie players, are converging with those seen in the mobile market. Increasing wired and wireless connectivity, greater storage of user data, dynamic download of programmable content, and handling of higher value services all suggest the need for a high-performance and robust security environment.

Security attacks are not limited to open systems with user-extensible software stacks. Within the automotive market most systems are closed or deeply embedded, yet odometer fraud, in which the mileage reading is rolled back to inflate the price of a secondhand vehicle, is still prevalent. The US Department of Transportation reports that this fraud alone costs American consumers hundreds of millions of dollars every year in inflated vehicle prices.

Security features typically encountered in these embedded systems are those that verify that firmware updates are authentic and those that ensure that debug mechanisms cannot be used maliciously.

Notes

ⁱCyber Security in Federal Government, Booz Allen Hamilton
ⁱⁱSource: Booz Allen Hamilton. www.boozallen.com
ⁱⁱⁱ"The Hunt for the Kill Switch," IEEE Spectrum, May 2008
^iv"The Hunt for the Kill Switch," IEEE Spectrum, May 2008
^vAn FPGA, or field-programmable gate array, is a general-purpose programmable chip with logic blocks and programmable interconnections. FPGA often replace application-specific ICs for small-volume applications. A bit stream is the interconnection information between the logic elements of the FPGA. A bit stream defines the function of the FPGA.
^viReport of the Defense Science Board Task Force on High Performance Microchip Supply, Defense Science Board, US Department of Defense, February 2005; http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2005-02-HPMS_Report_Final.pdf.
^viiInnovation at Risk: Intellectual Property Challenges and Opportunities, white paper, Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, June 2008.
^viii http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/MTO/Programs/Trusted_Integrated_Circuits_(TRUST).aspx
^ixTool control language: Standard CAD tools support a common tool control language for automating design flows and batch mode jobs
^x"The Hunt for the Kill Switch," IEEE Spectrum, May 2008
^xiTowards a Comprehensive and Systematic Classification of Hardware Trojans, J Rajendran et al.
^xii http://larc.ee.nthu.edu.tw/~cww/n/625/6251/05DFT0603.pdf
^xiiiX. Wang, M. Tehranipoor, and J. Plusquellic, "Detecting Malicious Inclusions in Secure Hardware: Challenges and Solutions," Proc. IEEE Int'l Workshop Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST 08), IEEE CS Press, 2008, pp. 15-19
^xivHardware Trojan: Threats and Emerging Solutions, Rajat Subhra Chakraborty et al.
^xvG.E. Suh, D. Deng, and A. Chan, "Hardware Authentication Leveraging Performance Limits in Detailed Simulations and Emulations," Proc. 46th Design Automation Conf. (DAC 09), ACM Press, 2009, pp. 682-687.
^xviSource: Building a Secure System Using TrustZone™ Technology, ARM Technologies white paper

Asif Iqbal, SDM '11

Understanding Patient Wait Times at the LV Prasad Eye Institute

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 00:55:00 +0000

By Ali Kamil, SDM '12, and Dmitriy Lyan, SDM '11

The challenge presented in this project was to reduce patient wait times and variability at LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) in Hyderabad, India. Since its inception, LVPEI has served more than 15 million patients, of which more than 50 percent were served at no charge. Each outpatient department (OPD) clinic sees 65 to 120 patients in a given day, with the average wait time ranging from 45 minutes to 6 hours. This variability in service time and associated long delays is a source of angst for patients, stress for hospital staff—who consistently work overtime, and damage to the reputation of the clinic in the region (see Figure 1). The MIT Sloan team was tasked with applying management and engineering principles to investigate the source of the variability and delays at LVPEI.

Figure 1. Service time variability at LVPEI.

The process

To understand the problem holistically, the team attempted to build a reference model of the problem experienced at LVPEI. From January through March 2013, the team:

Communicated with the leads from LVPEI's clinical and administrative operations staff;
Conducted interviews with key stakeholders to understand patient flow dynamics; and
Focused on qualitative metrics, due to constraints in accessing actual data points.

To identify existing best practices in managing patient flows and reducing variability, the team also conducted research at Boston-area eye clinics—Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Hospital, and Mount Auburn Hospital.

The team traveled to Hyderabad, India, in March 2013 to conduct on-the-ground research and collect quantitative metrics for patient service and wait times. Operating from the hospital, the team:

Conducted time and motion studies in four of LVPEI's OPD clinics, including two cornea and two retina clinics;
Collected time stamps as patients and corresponding medical folders moved through the clinics;
Interviewed stakeholders, including faculty ophthalmologists in each of the studied clinics, administrators who oversee appointment scheduling and resource allocation, and operations professors from the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, to understand their prior work on patient wait time trends at LVPEI;
Conducted patient surveys at walk-in counters to understand the motivation for choosing the walk-in option, and surveyed patients at the checkout counter to gauge patient satisfaction levels and concerns about their LVPEI experiences;
Constructed a system dynamics model—based on the qualitative data gathered from numerous interviews and observations—that reflects the core structure of LVPEI OPD operations and simulates patient flow in a given day; the model was then validated by key stakeholders and calibrated to the data collected on site (see Figure 2); and
Worked with key stakeholders to validate and calibrate the data collected on site.

Figure 2. Patient arrivals by time of day.

Figure 3. Patient's adherence to appointments.

The findings

Based on our work on the ground and subsequent application of system dynamics to determine the cause for variability and long service times, we showed that:

Given a fixed OPD capacity, patient wait times are largely a function of service demand, scheduling, and resource-specific factors;
Demand and scheduling factors include the complexity of patient cases, their volume, and the way they are scheduled in a given day; factors impacting resource allocation and utilization include patient workup time, patient investigation time, and the operating hours of the OPD clinic;
To accommodate larger daily volumes of patients, providers reduce the time they spend with each patient, thereby undermining the quality of care provided and increasing the likelihood of medical errors; and
Walk-in patients are the source of variability in the system and cause the established schedule at LVPEI to deviate.

Given the fixed OPD capacity and service staff, we recommended that LVPEI consider allocating blocks of time in the day dedicated specifically for walk-in patients and follow-up patients. Increasing awareness and enforcing adherence to an appointment-based scheduling system will enable predictable patient wait and service times.

Next steps

Further analysis is needed to study the relationship between the volume of patients, the number of incorrect diagnoses, and the number of patients that return to the clinic to receive additional treatment as a result of error. The team is continuing its work with LVPEI to obtain additional data on patient check-in and checkout times. Additionally, the team is working to make the system dynamics model robust under extreme scenarios and able to delineate among patient types—i.e. walk-in, appointment-based, or follow-up patients.

About the Authors

Ali Kamil is a graduate student at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses on understanding managerial and organizational effectiveness in low-resource settings—specifically developing and emerging markets. His expertise lies in employing system dynamics–based modeling and tools to simulate complex operations and devise effective policy measures. Prior to MIT, Kamil was an engagement manager at Deloitte Consulting LLP, where he advised leading media, entertainment, and telecom clients in matters of competitive strategy, operations, and technology implementation/outsourcing. He holds a B.S. in computer science and economics from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dmitriy Lyan is a senior product manager of technical product at Amazon. He is a graduate of the MIT System Design and Management program, where he specialized in the development of performance management systems for shared value-focused organizations. In his thesis work, Lyan applied system dynamics methodology to explore performance dynamics in US military behavioral health clinics. Prior to MIT, he worked in the investment management and software development industries. He holds an M.S. in financial engineering from Claremont Graduate University/Peter F. Drucker School of Management and a B.S. in computer engineering from the University of California, San Diego.

Supply Chain and Risk Management

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 02:12:00 +0000

Making the Right Risk Decisions to Strengthen Operations Performance

By Ioannis Kyratzoglou

This study analyzes the supply chain operations and risk management approaches of large companies and examines their operations and financial performance in the face of supply chain disruptions. It proposes a framework and a set of principles to help companies manage today's risk challenges and prepare for future opportunities. Using this framework, business leaders can increase their awareness of where their companies and their competitors stand.

Executive Summary

The MIT/PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Supply Chain and Risk Management Survey is a study of the supply chain operations and risk management approaches of 209 companies with global footprints. As globally operating organizations, they are exposed to high-risk scenarios ranging from controllable risks—such as raw material price fluctuation, currency fluctuations, market changes, or fuel price volatility—to uncontrollable ones such as natural disasters.

The findings validate five key principles that companies can learn from to better manage today's risk challenges to their supply chains and prepare for future opportunities.

Supply chain disruptions have a significant impact on company business and financial performance.
Companies with mature supply chain and risk management capabilities are more resilient to supply chain disruptions. They are impacted less and they recover faster than companies with immature capabilities.
Mature companies investing in supply chain flexibility are more resilient to disruptions than mature companies that do not invest in supply chain flexibility.
Mature companies investing in risk segmentation are more resilient to disruptions than mature companies that do not invest in risk segmentation.
Companies with mature capabilities in supply chain and risk management do better along all surveyed dimensions of operational and financial performance than immature companies.

"Capability maturity," as referred to above, was determined using our supply chain and risk management capability maturity framework. This framework assesses the degree to which companies are applying the most effective enablers of supply chain risk reduction (e.g., flexibility, risk governance, alignment, integration, information sharing, data, models and analytics, and rationalization) and their associated processes. The model depicts where a company stands in relation to its competition and the rest of the industry.

According to the survey results, as many as 60 percent of the companies pay only marginal attention to risk reduction processes. These companies are categorized as having immature risk processes. They mitigate risk by either increasing capacity or strategically positioning additional inventory. This is not a surprise as the survey also shows that most of these companies are focused either on maximizing profit, minimizing costs, or maintaining service levels.

The remaining 40 percent do invest in developing advanced risk reduction capabilities and are classified as having mature processes. Our research validated that companies with mature risk processes perform operationally and financially better—something for CEOs and CFOs to note. Indeed, managing supply chain risk is good for all parts of the business—product design, development, operations, and sales. Using the capability maturity model, companies can benchmark their ability to respond to risks and then increase their capability maturity to gain competitive advantage.

When Mature Risk Management and Operational Resilience Pay Off

On March 11, 2011^[1], Nissan Motor Company Ltd. and its suppliers experienced a 9.0-magnitude earthquake as it struck off the east coast of Japan. The quake was among the five most powerful earthquakes on record. Tsunami waves in excess of 40 meters traveled up to 10 km inland, causing a "Level 7" meltdown at three nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. The impact of this disaster was devastating: 25,000 people died, went missing, or were injured; 125,000 buildings were damaged; and economic losses were estimated at $200 billion.

In the weeks following the catastrophic earthquake, 80 percent of the automotive plants in Japan suspended production. Nissan's production capacity was perceived to have suffered most from the disaster compared to its competitors. Six production facilities and 50 of the firm's critical suppliers suffered severe damage. The result was a loss of production capacity equivalent to approximately 270,000 automobiles.
Despite this devastation, Nissan's recovery was remarkable. During the next six months, Nissan's production in Japan decreased by only 3.8 percent compared to an industrywide decrease of 24.8 percent. Nissan ended 2011 with an increase in production of 9.3 percent compared to a reduction of 9.3 percent industrywide.

How was Nissan able to successfully navigate a disruption of this magnitude so successfully?

To begin with, Nissan responded by adhering to the principles of its risk management philosophy. It focused on identifying risks as early as possible, actively analyzing these risks, planning countermeasures, and rapidly implementing them.
The company had prepared a continuous readiness plan encompassing its suppliers, including: an earthquake emergency response plan; a business continuity plan; and disaster simulation training. Nissan deployed these advanced capabilities throughout risk management and along the supply chain.
Management was empowered to make decisions locally without lengthy analysis.
The supply chain model structure was flexible, meaning there was decentralization with strong central control when required. This was combined with simplified product lines.
There was visibility across the extended enterprise and good coordination between internal and external business functions.

These capabilities allowed the company to share information globally, allocate component part supplies on higher margin products, and adjust production in a cost-efficient way.

Why This Study?

Counterintuitive stories such as Nissan's are at the heart of this study, illustrating that companies with highly mature capabilities in both supply chain management and risk management will be able to effectively address risks, outperform the market, and even gain competitive advantage.

We believe that linking the customer value proposition, sound supply chain operations, and robust risk management is key to success. Moreover, there are supply chain and risk management principles, frameworks, and processes that enable companies to address complex market challenges and achieve superior performance.

The MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) launched the Supply Chain Risk Management Survey to assess how global organizations address these challenges and their impact on business operations. The survey was distributed to members of the MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation and worldwide clients of PwC. In total, 209 companies completed the survey. Appendix A characterizes the participant population.

The Challenges of a More Global Supply Chain

When a company expands from a local or regional presence to a more global one, the operations strategy needs to be adjusted to align with the changes. The economic crisis in Europe is a good example of this. Due to the decrease in demand for many products and services on the continent, companies are changing strategies, seeking alternate global markets. That's when operations become more complex. Transportation and logistics become more challenging, lead times lengthen, costs increase, and end customer service can suffer. With a more a global footprint, different products are directed to more diverse customers via different distribution channels, which require different supply chains.

To address the challenge successfully, there are a number of questions companies need to consider as their operations globalize.

What are the drivers of supply chain complexity for a company with global operations, and how have they evolved over the recent past?
What are the sources of supply chain risk?
How can vulnerability and exposure to high-impact supply chain disruptions be properly assessed and managed?
How can supply chain resilience be improved?
What supply chain operations and risk principles will guide the improvement of the company's bottom line: the operations and financial performance?

Through this research, we aim to provide valuable insight in response to these questions.

What Are the Drivers of Supply Chain Operations Complexity?

Supply chains are exposed to both domestic and international risks. The more complex the supply chain, the less predictable the likelihood and the impact of any disruption. In other words, exposure to risk is potentially higher. We asked survey participants their views on how certain key supply chain complexity drivers have evolved over the past three years. The responses are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Evolution of supply chain complexity over the past three years.

In recent years, the size of the supply chain network has increased, dependencies among entities and functions have shifted, the speed of change has accelerated, and the level of transparency has decreased.
Overall, developing a product and getting it to the market requires more complex supply chains needing a higher degree of coordination.

What Are the Sources of Supply Chain Risk?

Risks to global supply chains vary from known-unknowns and controllable, to unknown-unknowns and uncontrollable ones^[2]. In the Nissan case, the devastating natural disasters were unknown-unknowns (difficult to quantify the likelihood of occurrence) and uncontrollable (you cannot manage the expected risk and its impact).

To understand the level of exposure to diverse and broad-ranging sources of risk, we asked survey participants to identify the sources of risks faced by their supply chain. The results are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Survey participants' view on sources of risks faced by their supply chain.

Interestingly, all the top six risks, with the exception of environmental catastrophes, are known-unknowns and controllable to some degree.

To What Parameters Are Supply Chain Operations Most Sensitive?

Respondents replied that their supply chain operations were most sensitive to skill set and expertise (31%), price of commodities (29%), and energy and oil (28%). See Figure 3.

As an example of the energy and oil parameter, according to the US Department of Energy Information Administration, US diesel prices rose 9.5 cents per gallon in February 2012. Cognizant of the sensitivity and impact diesel prices can have on their financial bottom line, shippers adjust their budgets to offset the increased costs higher fuel prices produce.

Figure 3. Parameters to which survey participants' supply chain operations are most sensitive.

How Do Companies Mitigate Against Disruptions?

What kind of actions do our survey respondents currently take to reduce the exposure of their supply chain to potential disruptions or to mitigate the impact? Nissan had a well-thought-out and exercised business continuity plan ready to kick into action to facilitate a quick recovery. And indeed, 82 percent of respondents said they had business continuity plans ready. See Figure 4.

Figure 4. Actions companies take to mitigate supply chain risk.

The Supply Chain and Risk Management Maturity Framework

Strengthen Supply Chain and Risk Management

As Nissan illustrated, to reduce vulnerability and exposure to high-impact supply chain disruptions, companies need advanced capabilities along two dimensions: supply chain management and risk management. But how can they understand the maturity level of their capabilities in these areas before designing ways to strengthen them?

The Seven Supply Chain and Risk Enablers of Maturity

There are seven factors that enable stronger capabilities in both supply chain management and risk management. By matching their practices against these seven "enablers," companies can assess how mature or immature their capabilities are. This is the basis of our Supply Chain and Risk Management Maturity Model—an empirical framework that applies set questions across the seven enablers.

Risk governance—the presence of appropriate risk management structures, processes, and culture.
Flexibility and redundancy in product, network, and process architectures—having the right levels of flexibility and redundancy across the value chain to be able to absorb disruptions and adapt to change.
Alignment between partners in the supply chain—strategic alignment on key value dimensions, identification of emerging patterns, and advancement toward higher value propositions.
Upstream and downstream supply chain integration—information sharing, visibility, and collaboration with upstream and downstream supply chain partners.
Alignment between internal business functions—alignment and the integration of activities between company value chain functions on a strategic, tactical, and operational level.
Complexity management/rationalization—ability to standardize and simplify networks and processes, interfaces, product architectures, and product portfolios and operating models.
Data, models, and analytics—development and use of intelligence and analytical capabilities to support supply chain and risk management functions.

According to our survey, companies consider alignment between partners in the supply chain as the most important factor in enabling risk reduction (60%). See Figure 5.

Internal and external process integration is also very important (49%) and (47%). Risk governance (44%) and network flexibility and redundancy (37%) are also being included in the mix. Finally, despite recent advances, data, models and analytics (28%), and complexity management/ rationalization (26%) are low on the priority list. As analytics continue to mature, this may change.

Figure 5. Survey participants' view on which capability enabler they consider the most important.

Four Levels of Maturity in Supply Chain Operations and Risk Management

Supply chain operations and risk management processes go hand in hand and complement one another. At lower maturity levels, the processes are decoupled and stand alone, but at high maturity levels they are fully intertwined. For developing and deploying capabilities to manage supply chain risk effectively, a high level of supply chain sophistication is an absolute prerequisite. There are four levels of supply chain and risk management process maturity:

Level I: Functional supply chain management and ad hoc management of risk. Supply chains are organized functionally with a very low degree of integration. They are characterized by high duplication of activities, internally and externally disconnected processes, and an absence of coordinated efforts with suppliers and partners. Product design is performed independently and there is little visibility into partners/suppliers operations. Inventory and capacity levels are unbalanced, leading to poor customer service and high total costs. There is no risk governance structure and poor visibility into sources of supply chain risk. Only very limited vulnerability or threat analysis is performed. Risk is managed in an ad hoc way with no anticipation or positioning of response mechanisms.

Level II: Internal supply chain integration and positioning of planned buffers to absorb disruptions. Supply chains are cross-functionally organized. Internal processes are integrated, information is shared, and visibility is provided between functions in a structured way. Resources are jointly managed and there is a higher level of alignment between performance objectives. Integrated planning is performed at strategic, tactical, and operational levels—leading to a single company plan. Risk management processes are documented and internally integrated. Basic threats and vulnerabilities are analyzed. Scenarios concerning the base integrated plan are conducted to position targeted buffers of capacity and inventory to absorb disruptions. Postponement or delayed differentiation product design principles are explored to improve response to changing demand patterns. There is minimum visibility, however, into emerging changes and patterns outside the company.

Level III: External supply chain collaboration and proactive risk response. Supply chains feature collaboration across the extended enterprise. Information sharing is extensive and visibility is high. Key activities such as product design or inventory management are integrated among supply chain partners. External input is incorporated into internal planning activities. Interfaces are standardized, and products and processes are rationalized to reduce complexity. Information sharing and visibility outside the company domain is exploited to set up sensors and predictors of change and variability to proactively position response mechanisms. Formal quantitative methodologies for risk management are introduced and sensitivity analysis is conducted. Suppliers and partners are monitored for resilience levels and business continuity plans are created.

Level IV: Dynamic supply chain adaptation and fully flexible response to risk. Companies are fully aligned with their supply chain partners on key value dimensions across the extended enterprise. Individual strategies and operations are guided by common objectives and fitness schemata. Supply chains are fully flexible to interact and adapt to complex dynamic environments. Emerging value chain patterns resulting from this interaction are probed and identified and higher value equilibrium points are achieved. At this level, the supply chain is often segmented to match multiple customer value propositions. Risk sensors and predictors are supported by real-time monitoring and analytics. Risk governance is formal but flexible. Full flexibility in the supply chain product, network, and process architecture and short supply chain transformation lead-times allow quick response and adaptability. Supplier segmentation is performed. Risk strategies are segmented based on supplier profiles and market-product combination characteristics.

Table 1 summarizes the criteria used as a basis for the questions and the maturity levels.

Table 1. Capability maturity classification model.

How Mature Are Company Capabilities?

The framework is a useful tool in evaluating each company's capabilities. Importantly, according to our study, it shows that the majority of the companies surveyed have immature supply chain operations and risk management processes in place. See Figure 6.

Specifically, of the companies surveyed, only 41 percent were classified as having mature processes, based on their responses; 59 percent of companies have immature processes in place to effectively address incidents. Only a minority of companies (9 percent) are fully prepared to address potential challenges from supply chain disruptions in increasingly complex environments.

Figure 6. Companies classified by capability level.

Key Insights—More Mature Capabilities Lead to Better Operational Performance

Having assessed the maturity levels of the 209 companies in the survey, we then analyzed their business and operational performance indicators over the previous 12 months. Our aim was to understand the impact of disruptions on mature vs. immature companies.

The indicators cover a wide spectrum of company performance including profitability, efficiency, and service. Both the scale of the impact and the time it took to recover to prior or improved levels of performance were measured. These are the key insights from the 209 companies surveyed.

1. Supply chain disruptions have a significant impact on company business and financial performance.
To better understand the impact of disruptions^[3], we assessed the performance of companies that faced at least three disruptive incidents over the previous 12 months. If performance indicators were negatively affected by 3 percent or higher, this was considered "significant impact." As Figure 7 illustrates, 54 percent said that sales revenue was negatively affected and 64 percent suffered a decline in their customer service levels. Across all the operational key performance parameters (KPIs) examined, at least 60 percent reported a 3 percent or higher loss of value. For example, in India's textile industry, raw material costs rose by 6 percent due to India's recent sharp currency fall, causing fabric prices to rise^[4]. This currency volatility triggered a rise in total costs for fabric makers.

The importance of having mature capabilities in place to deal with supply chain disruptions is clear.

Figure 7. Percentage of companies that suffered a 3 percent or higher impact on their performance indicators as a result of supply chain disruptions in the previous 12 months.

2. Companies with mature supply chain and risk management processes are more resilient to disruptions than those with immature processes.
According to the survey results, companies with mature (maturity levels III & IV) supply chain and risk management processes are more resilient to disruptions than companies with immature (maturity levels I & II) processes. The more mature companies suffer lower impact and enjoy faster recovery.

Figure 8 shows the percentage of companies with more than three incidents that suffered an impact of 3 percent or higher on their performance as a result of supply chain disruptions in the previous 12 months.
Only 44 percent of the companies with mature processes suffered a 3 percent or more decline in their revenue compared to 57 percent with immature processes. The higher resilience trend for mature companies is common for all the KPIs examined. The difference is striking in key areas such as total supply chain cost, order fulfillment lead times and lead-time variability. These KPIs are among those most heavily impacted by supply chain disruptions, so mature companies gain a distinct advantage by investing in the proposed set of capabilities.

Figure 8. Performance of companies with mature vs. immature capabilities.

3. Mature companies that invest in supply chain flexibility are more resilient to disruption than mature companies that don't.
Flexibility is critical to a company's ability to adapt to change. A greater degree of flexibility allows companies to better respond to demand changes, labor strikes, technology changes, currency volatility, and volatile energy and oil prices. However, flexibility does not come free, and the higher the level of flexibility the more expensive it is to achieve. Similarly, achieving a higher level of service can be costly. It's a difficult trade-off between the desire to minimize costs vs. investing in flexibility or increasing customer service levels.
We asked the respondents to identify the key supply chain value drivers for their leading customer value proposition. High customer service level (34 percent) and flexibility (27 percent) were cited as the top two drivers followed by cost minimization (22 percent) and efficient use of inventory (14 percent). See Figure 9.

Figure 9. Key supply chain value driver to match customer value proposition.
Two distinctive groups emerge from this response:

The cost-efficient group—mature companies that selected cost or efficiency as their key supply chain value driver.
The flexible-response group—mature companies that selected flexibility or customer service levels as their key supply chain value driver.

When we compared the performance resilience of these two groups, we learned that the flexible-response group fared significantly better. The performance of cost-efficient companies suffered more from the changes and disruptions in their supply chains, even though they possess mature capabilities in deploying their strategy. Mature companies investing in flexibility, responsiveness, and customer service demonstrate higher performance resilience compared to companies whose strategies emphasize cost and efficiency. Figure 10 highlights the major differences.

Figure 10. Performance of mature cost-efficient vs mature flexible-response companies.

Figure 10 also illustrates that the largest majority of cost-efficient companies (80 percent) face high variability in their supply chain lead times once a supply chain disruption takes place. This is interesting given that low variability is one of the key drivers of an efficient operating strategy.

4. Mature companies that invest in risk segmentation are more resilient to disruptions than mature companies that don't.
Companies with different market value propositions prioritize different value dimensions in their supply chains. Today, companies often target different market segments and therefore have several customer value propositions. For example, one part of the product portfolio may emphasize price as the key differentiator while another emphasizes product innovation or product selection and availability.

We asked our survey respondents to identify the key value dimension of their leading customer value proposition. The top three choices were: quality (23 percent), innovation (14 percent), and price (14 percent). See Figure 11.

Figure 11. The key value dimension of the leading customer value proposition of survey participants.
Different value propositions—and the corresponding operating strategies—do not necessarily have the same risk profile. Value dimensions are not exposed to the same threats and vulnerabilities. As a result, the management of supply chain risk—exposure reduction and mitigation strategies—may need to vary significantly based on the value dimension.

Consider a value proposition emphasizing product innovation. The high speed of innovation, the corresponding lower forecast accuracy, the higher price risk, and the higher supply risk will essentially determine the type of strategy the company deploys with its supplier. If the price risk or supply risk is higher as a result of the speed of innovation then it is more likely that flexible risk-sharing contracts, rather than a buildup of inventory buffers is appropriate. Thus, risk strategies needs to be segmented according to the value driver.

We asked survey respondents whether they actively pursued risk strategy segmentation. Almost 60 percent do and 40 percent don't. See Figure 12.

Figure 12. Percentage of companies that perform risk strategy segmentation.

We asked the 59 percent of companies that pursued risk segmentation, "What product differentiators do you use as a basis for risk strategy segmentation?" The top three choices were: strategic importance (56 percent), demand volatility (52 percent) and sales volume (45 percent). See Figure 13.

Figure 13. Key product differentiators for risk strategy segmentation.

Companies with mature capabilities were clustered into two main groups: those that perform risk strategy segmentation and those that don't. We then compared the performance resilience to supply chain disruptions for both groups. We observed that mature companies investing in risk segmentation based on different value propositions demonstrated higher performance resilience than companies that did not invest in risk segmentation.

Figure 14 highlights the major difference between the two groups across operations and financial performance indicators. Of particular note is the sales revenue category. Only 32 percent of the mature companies that segment their risk management strategy were significantly impacted as a result of incidents that occurred. This compares to 70 percent of mature companies that don't segment—a 38 percent difference!

Figure 14. Performance of companies based on risk strategy segmentation.

5. Companies with mature capabilities in supply chain management and risk management do better along all surveyed dimensions of operational and financial performance than immature companies.
We compared how company operations and financial performance differed between the mature and immature companies over the prior 12 months. As Figure 15 highlights, companies with mature capabilities in supply chain and risk management did better along all surveyed dimensions of operational and financial performance.

This finding suggests that there is a direct link between having mature supply chain and risk management capabilities and higher overall performance.

Figure 15. Business and financial performance difference between mature and immature companies.

The capability maturity evaluation will enable company executives to gain insight into the risk position and maturity of the company measured in terms of operations and financial performance.

Appendix A: Survey Demographics and Trends

The majority of the 209 survey participants are from Europe. Figure 16 illustrates the geographical distribution of survey participants according to where their headquarters are based.

Figure 16. Distribution of survey participants' headquarters by region.

Figure 17. Distribution of survey participants by industry.

Figure 18. Distribution of survey participants by annual sales revenue based on 2011 reported sales revenues.

The majority of survey participants (64 percent) are manufacturing companies. See Figure 19.

Figure 19. Percentage of manufacturing vs. non-manufacturing survey companies.

A total of 83 percent of the participating companies have their manufacturing operations dispersed in multiple geographic regions while only 17 percent have them in the same region as their headquarters.

Figure 20. Distribution of companies by scale of operations globalization.

With 83 percent of the companies having operations across regions, we examined how the split of operations volume by regions compared with the split of their sales volume by region to get an indication of the use of regional vs. global operations strategies to meet demand. For the previous 12 months, we observed that sales vs. operation volumes per region were mostly aligned—indicating use of regional strategies by survey participants.

Figure 21. Comparison between manufacturing operations volume and sales volume by region.

This is a comparison between the current and the future operations volume in 2015 by region based on the expectation of survey participants. America's operations remain constant. A 3 percent growth is shown for Asia and a corresponding 2 percent decline for Europe, indicating a shift of operations from Europe to Asia.

Figure 22. Comparison between current vs. future expected operations by volume.

Survey participants expect a drop in their sales volume in Europe by 2015 and an increase in sales volumes in most of other world regions with Asia, the Middle East, and Africa contributing the biggest part.

Figure 23. Comparison between current vs. future expected sales volumes by region.

Appendix B: Key Performance Indicator Definitions

The key operations^[5] and financial performance indicators used in this study are described below:

Market value
The current market value of a company is the total number of shares outstanding multiplied by the current price of its shares. Recent research has shown that shareholder value can be significantly impacted by severe supply chain disruptions. An example is Mattel, the world's largest toymaker, which had to issue a major product recall due to quality issues. Mattel's stock price suffered a steep fall when the recall was announced in Q3 2007 and did not recover for many months.

Sales revenue
The revenues a company makes after the sale of its products. Supply chain disruptions or structural market shifts can impact a company's ability to deliver the value proposition and lead to loss of sales volume and sales revenue.

Market share
The company's sales over the period divided by the total sales of the industry over the same period. Loss of delivery capability or damaged brand image can lead to market-share loss, especially when the impact of a supply chain disruption is long-lasting.

Earnings before income and taxes margin
The earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) divided by total revenue. EBIT margin can provide an investor with a clearer view of a company's core profitability.

Total supply chain cost
The sum of fixed and variable costs to perform the plan, source, make, and deliver functions for company products. Supply chain disruptions have an impact on total supply chain cost as a number of activities need to be expedited or redesigned across the various functions.

Supply chain asset utilization
Supply chain asset utilization is a measure of actual use of supply chain assets divided by the available use of these assets. Assets include both fixed and moving assets. Fixed assets enable direct product development, transformation, and delivery of a company's products or services, as well as indirect support, and typically have greater than one year of service life. A disruption can directly impact the usability of assets and resources or cause their repositioning. As a result, the utilization of key assets and resources may deviate significantly from the set targets.

Inventory turns
Inventory turnover ratio measures the efficiency of inventory management. It reflects how many times average inventory was produced and sold during the period. A disruption or change may impact inventory efficiency either by introducing increased obsolescence or by changing inventory positioning and consumption plans.

Customer service levels
The probability that customer demand is met. The loss of delivery, customer communication, or customer service capability due to a supply chain disruption can impact customer service levels.

Order fulfillment lead time
The average actual lead times consistently achieved, from order receipt to order entry complete, order entry complete to start build, start build to order ready for shipment, order ready for shipment to customer receipt of order.

Total supply chain lead time
Total supply chain lead time in supply chain management is the time from the moment the customer places an order (the moment you learn of the requirement) to the moment the product is received by the customer. In the absence of finished goods or intermediate (work in progress) inventory, it is the time it takes to actually manufacture the order without any inventory other than raw materials. Supply chain disruptions can introduce significant delays across all stages of the supply chain.

Total supply chain lead-time variability
Total supply chain lead-time variability is the time variation around the total supply chain lead-time mean. Exposure to incident disruptions introduces variability and fluctuations in the standard lead-time levels within the supply chain.

About the Project Team

Professor David Simchi-Levi, MIT

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Engineering Systems Division, MIT
Professor David Simchi-Levi is considered to be one of the thought leaders in supply chain management. He holds a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University. His research currently focuses on developing and implementing robust and efficient techniques for logistics and manufacturing systems. He has published widely in professional journals on both practical and theoretical aspects of logistics and supply chain management. He is also the editor-in-chief of Operations Research, the flagship journal of INFORMS, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

Ioannis M. Kyratzoglou

System Design and Management Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mr. Ioannis M. Kyratzoglou is a fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the School of Engineering. He holds a master of science and a mechanical engineer's degree from MIT. He is currently a principal software systems engineer with The MITRE Corporation. His interests are in software engineering and data analytics.

Constantine G. Vassiliadis

Principal Manager, PricewaterhouseCooper, The Netherlands
Dr. Constantine Vassiliadis holds a Ph.D. from Imperial College, London, in process systems engineering. He has been working as a consultant on supply chain improvement programs with companies worldwide for the past 15 years. In parallel, he is involved in supply chain research and thought leadership initiatives with leading academic institutions.

References

Nissan Motor Company Ltd.: Building Operational Resiliency: William Schmidt, David Simchi-Levi, MIT Sloan Management: Case Number 13-150
Operations Rules: Delivering Value Through Flexible Operations, David Simchi-Levi, 2010, The MIT Press.
Information about disruption impacts is self-reported by survey participants.
www.business-standard.com, Fabric prices rise on weaker rupee, 5 September 2013
David Simchi-Levi, Phil Kminsky, Edith Simchi-Levi (2008). Designing and Managing the Supply Chain: Concepts, Strategies, and Case Studies, 3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill Irwin

BuzzFeed Features New Book by Ali Almossawi, SDM '10

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 02:40:00 +0000

Ali Almossawi

BuzzFeed recently reviewed an "Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments", by Ali Almossawi, SDM'10. Read more here.

MIT SDM Sponsors Conference on Big Data and Systems Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 02:39:00 +0000

By Lois Slavin, MIT SDM Communications Director

Jaume Plensa's Alchemist sits across
Massachusetts Avenue facing MIT's main
entrance. Comprised of stainless steel
mathematical equations, this modern-day
alchemist has been interpreted by some to
symbolize the need to internalize
knowledge so that it can then be used to
address contemporary challenges and
transform today's world.
(Photo by John Parrillo )

On October 10, 2013, experts from industry and MIT will meet in MIT's Wong Auditorium for the annual MIT SDM Conference on Systems Thinking for Contemporary Challenges. This year's focus is "Systems Thinking and Big Data: Going Beyond the Numbers."

Sponsored by the MIT System Design and Management (SDM) program, the event will highlight best practices for using systems thinking and big data to strategically deploy a company's technical and managerial resources.

SDM Executive Director Pat Hale will open the day by framing the challenges and the competitive imperative of using systems thinking in conjunction with big data. A "back to the classroom" session on systems dynamics will follow, led by SDM faculty member J. Bradley Morrison, Ph.D.

Speakers will include several SDM alumni who have risen to the top of the big data arena in their industries. They include:

Troy Hamilton, SDM '97, CIO, NYSE Technologies, Infrastructure Solutions, NYSE Euronext
Brian J. Ippolito, SDM '98, President and CEO, Orbis Technologies
John Baker, SDM '07, Founding Member, The Data Sciences Group
Sandro Catanzaro, SDM '04, Cofounder and Senior Vice President of Analytics and Innovation, DataXu

A panel discussion on "Leveraging Big Data for Business Value" will be moderated by Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Ph.D., Vice President Emeritus, IBM, and Visiting Lecturer, Sloan School of Management and Engineering Systems Division, MIT. Panelists include:

Mona Vernon, SDM '09, Senior Director, Emerging Technologies, Thomson Reuters
David Deitrich, Advisory Technical Education Consultant, Global Education Services, EMC
Puneet Batra, Former Chief Data Scientist, Kyruus

SDM Industry Codirector Joan Rubin will conclude the day with an overview of insights and next steps.

Additional information/registration

SDM Alum Designs and Promotes Ford Liftgate - SDM Pulse, Summer 2013

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 23:24:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of Ford Motor Company

A self-described “car guy,” Vince Mahé, SDM ’06, is a lead design engineer at Ford Motor Co. He refers to himself a “crossover” who has traversed many disparate terrains: growing up as a child in France and relocating to the United States at age 10 where he went “from 0 to 60 mph” to learn a new language and culture; transitioning from volunteering as a firefighter in his late teens to working as an engineer in his late 20s; leading the design of innovative features for the 2013 Ford Escape crossover SUV; and starring in a series of ads in Ford’s “Go Further” campaign in recognition of his contributions designing its innovative liftgate technology.

Hands-free liftgate technology
automatically opens after detecting kicking
motion under the bumper.

The challenge: Lead a design team that would help reinvent the Escape by identifying and incorporating new features that would “wow” customers.

Applying SDM learnings:

•    Leadership: “In SDM’s monthlong January session, we worked in teams specially chosen to represent diversity of thought, expertise, and culture. Members of my SDM group included high-achieving professionals from NASA, Boeing, Ford, and others. We learned that in order to build a strong team, it’s important for all members to slow down and take time to express their feelings openly so that we could all understand each other and work together more effectively. We also learned how to share leadership, follow others, and follow in order to lead.” Mahé applied these techniques when leading his global design team.

•    Innovation: The liftgate’s innovative design consists of two sensors and a control module. The sensors detect the presence of a foot and a shin—as well as the presence of the key—and as soon as the user comes within a meter of the car, it sends a signal to the power liftgate, which opens automatically.

•    Systems thinking: “Coursework in system architecture, systems engineering, and systems design gave me a set of methodologies for dealing with the technical and managerial complexities of requirements analysis, prioritization, design specs, concurrent engineering, testing, safety, and other important elements needed to produce the ‘wow.’ This, in turn, enabled us to troubleshoot any potential problems.”

The results: The Ford Escape was named No. 1 in the affordable compact and affordable crossover SUV categories by US News on its Best Cars website and received numerous other accolades. As lead design engineer, Mahé starred in several commercials for the Ford Escape.

Video frame courtesy of Ford Motor Company

See Vince at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLi9qHkaogM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyusEDHY_WQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlZhowLQ0fQ

Learn more about Vince Mahé and the Ford foot-activated liftgate:
sdm.mit.edu/vince.mahe

Big Data, Sports Analytics, and an SDM Fellow - SDM Pulse, Summer 2013

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 01:24:00 +0000

SDM ’12 Ben Levitt, a senior systems engineer at Raytheon Corporation, was a key player in the 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference held in March. Now in its seventh year and called the “Super Bowl of Sports Analytics” by Forbes magazine, the student-run conference attracted more than 2,700 attendees.

Levitt’s contributions: With the support of MIT M.B.A. and now Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey, Levitt created two panels—an in-game coaching session titled "Monday Morning Quarterback: Coaching and In-Game Decisions" and another called "Big Data: Lessons for Sports." He developed the content framework for each and lined up participants from the sports, business, media, and technology sectors.

“Monday Morning Quarterback”: The in-game coaching panel used video and audience interactivity to encourage the panelists and the audience to explore the use of analytics in all aspects of play calling. The panelists, a collection of the NFL's best coaches and managers, included:

•    Jack De Rio, defensive coordinator, Denver Broncos
•    Herm Edwards, NFL analyst, ESPN, and former NFL Head Coach
•    Thomas Dimitroff, general manager, Atlanta Falcons
•    Brian Burke, founder, Advanced NFL Stats website

Tony Reali, host of “Around the Horn” and “stat boy” on “Pardon the Interruption,” ESPN, moderated the panel.

“Big Data-Lessos for Sports”: Composed of the world's best data experts, this panel discussed how “nexgen” data scientists can supersede today's “stats geeks.” Panelists also explored best practices from industries outside of sports and the insights they offer into how to turn petabytes of “motion capture” and multispectral data into competitive advantage. Panelists included:

•    Chris Selland, vice president of marketing, HP Vertica
•    Jeff Hammerbacher, cofounder of Cloudera and former leader of Facebook’s data team
•    Claudia Perlich, chief scientist, m6d
•    Joe Doyle, Erwin H. Schell professor of management and associate professor of applied economics, MIT Sloan School of Management

Michael Schrage, research fellow, MIT Sloan School of Management Center for Digital Business and the Imperial College (London) Business School, served as moderator.

The Monday Morning Quarterback: In-Game Coaching panel
included (left to right) Jack Del Rio, Denver Broncos; Tony Reali,
ESPN’s ‘Around the Horn’; Thomas Dimitroff, Atlanta Falcons;
Brian Burke, Advanced NFL Stats; Ben Levitt, panel
producer/developer and SDM '12; and Herm Edwards, ESPN.
Photo by SLY Photography

Watch the video: www.sloansportsconference.com/?page_id=460

Learn more about Ben Levitt at sdm.mit.edu

Transformation Framework for a Healthcare Enterprise - SDM Pulse, Summer 2013

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 01:02:00 +0000

Elizabeth Cilley Southerlan

The challenge: How to transform the Department of Defense (DoD) Military Psychological Health Enterprise (MPHE) at multiple levels of the organization into an enterprise that is capable of supporting the military’s quadruple aim of increasing readiness, reducing per capita cost, improving experience of care, and improving the health of the population. The enterprise architecting framework was chosen as the overall approach, but the specific target to which it would be applied was not determined.

The approach: Enterprise architecting offers eight “views” to use to assess the enterprise, develop an overall perspective, and foster a greater understanding of how the enterprise functions. These views are: strategy, organization, policy and external factors, information, infrastructure, knowledge, processes, and services/products (see Figure 1). This approach makes it possible to reduce the complexity of the enterprise as a whole.

Figure 1. Camp Lejeune MPHE X-Matrix.

The process: Working under the guidance and mentorship of Deborah Nightingale, Professor of the Practice at MIT’s Sociotechnical Systems Research Center, Elizabeth Cilley Southerlan, SDM ’12, decided to investigate the current state of a low-level MPHE component at Camp Lejeune, a US Marine Corps base camp in Jacksonville, NC. She then:

•    Applied holistic thinking to design, valuate, and select an optimal future state structure for an enterprise to realize its value proposition and desired behaviors;

•    Combined the results of the enterprise architecting analysis with multilevel analysis techniques to create a framework for transforming the larger, complex, multilevel MPHE;

•    Identified the dominant views of the Camp Lejeune component (organization, process, and information); the structure of the levels of the enterprise; and the interactions between the levels that could be used to understand the impact of decisions made at higher levels.

The SDM tools: Southerlan used matrix-based techniques learned in her SDM classes (see Figures 2 and 3) to transform the information she gathered into objective data. She then combined this data with information on how levels of the DoD MPHE interact to suggest a framework for modeling potential future states of the enterprise.

The findings: The descriptive application of Southerlan’s suggested framework supported both the design and selection of a transformation plan for the overall enterprise. Nightingale and Southerlan believe that the insight gained from combining enterprise architecting tools with multilevel analysis techniques could be used to support the transformation of a complex, multilevel enterprise.

Southerlan then worked closely with research colleague Jaya Plmanabhan, SDM ‘11, to explore potential approaches that could be derived from her work to support an extension to the current enterprise architecting assessment technique.

The results: In her thesis, Southerlan outlined the way in which the subjective information received during the as-is analysis was transformed into objective data. In her thesis investigation, the interactions between resources of the Camp Lejeune MPHE were quantified and analyzed to provide visibility to how changes made at higher levels of the complex, multilevel enterprise (the DoD MPHE) would impact the Camp Lejeune MPHE. While Southerlan used behavioral health (BH) resources and subsequent BH tasks as the quantifiable data in this application, she stated that there is potential to use different types of information as quantifiable data. For example, the metrics used by enterprises to measure performance could be considered objective data and could potentially be used to model impacts of changes made at different levels of a complex, multilevel enterprise. Southerlan recommended that when applying the framework outlined in her thesis, the dominant views of the enterprise—as determined during the enterprise architecting as-is analysis—should be used as reference to abstract objective data from the analysis. This will ensure that the data being used to model the as-is and potential future states of the enterprise have a strong presence throughout the enterprise.

Figure 2. Matrix of resources and tasks, organized by strategic group.

For a copy of Elizabeth Southerlan’s thesis, please contact SDM Industry Codirector Joan S. Rubin at jsrubin@mit.edu.

2013 SDM Tech Trek Report - SDM Pulse, Summer 2013

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 00:40:00 +0000

The annual MIT SDM Tech Trek provides an opportunity for SDM fellows to engage with leading companies to discuss strategic, operational, and tactical challenges from both business and technical perspectives. The 2013 visit to Silicon Valley exposed fellows (who have an average of 8-10 years of experience in a single field) to a wide variety of industries in a short amount of time. Fellows met with senior managers at best-in-class companies to learn about their complex technical and business challenges and how they address them. Designed to build upon the students’ coursework at MIT, the trek enabled students to tour facilities, view product demonstrations, and engage in lively and informative question and answer sessions with industry leaders. This year’s trek was led by cochairs Alvaro Madero and Michael Seelhoff, both SDM ’13s, and organized by several SDM fellows.

Goals:
•    Expand students’ knowledge of complex challenges across several industries
•    Strengthen relationships between the companies and SDM

Companies visited:
•    Cisco (network and communications devices)
•    Google (Internet information provider)
•    Amazon Lab126 (consumer products)
•    E.&J. Gallo Winery (food and beverages)
•    Intuitive Surgical (medical devices)
•    Twitter (Internet communications)
•    Mission Motors (automotive)

Trip highlights:

•    At Intuitive Surgical, Catherine Mohr, M.D., the director of medical research, discussed the DaVinci robotic surgical system, including the specific product’s history and the history of laparoscopic surgery in general. Mohr demonstrated how the device worked, explained many of the decisions that went into its final design, and offered each tech trek visitor a chance to try the multimillion-dollar device. Fellows also toured the manufacturing facilities to see how the device’s surgical arms and body were constructed. Students found it extremely informative to investigate the end-to-end processes used to create such a precise technological device, including the challenges the company encountered and the techniques used to overcome them. Mohr, who holds a S.B. and an S.M. from MIT, also discussed her decision to pursue an M.D. at Stanford, as well as her career path. Many SDMs came away inspired by the versatility of their MIT education, which can be applied to many industries.

•    SDM alumnus Juan Spiniak hosted the visit to Google. He presented an overview of the company and its products, plus a close-up of Google Fiber, the Internet service provider that he manages. Jim Miller, Google’s vice president of worldwide operations, discussed the company’s infrastructure and global operations. He emphasized that the company is interested in professionals who want to engage in “intrapraneurship” (behaving like an entrepreneur within a large company) and making a difference. Miller said he wants to use Google’s computing power to help analyze the human genome.

•    At Cisco, SDM fellows met with several SDM alumni, including Carol Ann McDevitt and Rafael Maranon. They were treated to a hands-on demonstration of Cisco’s current telepresence technology, then heard a presentation by Susie Wee, vice president and CTO of networked experiences, who provided some insight into the product’s future path. She also shared lessons she has learned along the way, from earning her degree at MIT to becoming a VP at Cisco.

•    At Mission Motors, Vice President for Finance and Administration Mike Rosenzweig gave a tour of the company’s operations, which included the workshop where electric motorcycle models are built, the battery charging and component design/fabrication facilities, and the software development area. CEO Jit Bhattacharya described the history of the electric vehicle industry, challenges experienced in this still-maturing market, and areas in which a system thinker could provide value. The visit demonstrated that creative ideas and emerging markets are not enough to build a company. External market development—in this case, evolution of battery technology and infrastructure—plays a critical role in supporting innovation. Mission Motors demonstrated that flexibility in the business plan was essential to keeping the company moving forward while the critical elements of the external market developed.

Key takeaways:
•    Face-to-face meetings with senior executives gave companies an opportunity to learn more about SDM and understand the competitive advantage that developing or enhancing a systems capability in their organizations can bring.
•    Meeting and engaging with SDM fellows offered opportunities for companies to experience first-hand the unique perspective and skills SDMs acquire at MIT and to identify future graduates to recruit.
•    SDM fellows returned to MIT with an expanded understanding of how versatile and applicable their SDM education is.

SDM Tech Trek 2014:
Planning for the next SDM Tech Trek is already under way. If your company would like to learn about participating, please contact Joan Rubin, SDM industry codirector at jsrubin@mit.edu or 617.253.2081.

Jonathan Pratt Named SDM's Director of Career Development and Recruiting

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Sat, 04 May 2013 02:31:00 +0000

Jonathan Pratt

By Lois Slavin

The MIT System Design and Management (SDM) program is pleased to announce that Jonathan Pratt recently joined SDM as director of career development and recruiting.

"We are fortunate—and delighted—that Jon has joined SDM in this capacity," said Pat Hale, director of the SDM Fellows Program. "His expertise and superb track record in career development and recruiting for the MIT Supply Chain Management (SCM) program; his industry background and knowledge; and his knowledge of MIT and the Engineering Systems Division (ESD) will enable him to make significant contributions to the SDM program and the community it serves."

Pratt spent almost five years in SCM as program manager for career development, recruiting, and alumni relations. His achievements include creating and fostering an SCM-specific career development strategy for individual and collective student needs; working closely with alumni, engaging them in both the career development and recruitment processes; and achieving manifold increases in the number of recruiting companies.

Prior to joining MIT, Pratt was a global recruiting and staffing manager at Stax Inc., a management consulting firm focused on in-depth research and analysis. He has also worked for State Street Corporation as a recruiter, CareerBuilder.com as an account executive, Comcast Media Group as a recruiter, and Robert Half International as an executive recruiting and staffing manager. He holds a BS in sports management/exercise management from Old Dominion University.

"Having worked in ESD's SCM for several years and collaborated with SDM, I've had the opportunity to get to know SDM quite well," said Pratt. "Its master's in engineering and management offers a distinctive interdisciplinary curriculum in leadership, innovation, and systems thinking that is unsurpassed."

"Moreover," he continued, "because SDM Fellows are mid-career technical professionals with significant experience and achievements, they can offer prospective employers a unique and powerful combination of technical and managerial expertise—and the ability to use systems thinking to address today's complex challenges. The career paths and achievements of SDM alumni clearly demonstrate this success in a wide range of organizations, and each graduating class is even stronger. I'm truly honored to be part of the SDM team and look forward to working with SDM Fellows, alumni, industry partners, and prospective employers."

Companies interested in learning about recruiting SDM Fellows may contact Jon Pratt at sdm_careers@mit.edu.

Systems Thinking Webinar Series Marks Significant Milestone

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Fri, 03 May 2013 01:37:00 +0000

Daniel Sturtevant

On May 6, 2013, at noon, the MIT SDM Systems Thinking Webinar Series will offer its 50th webinar. "Technical Debt in Large Systems: Understanding the Cost of Software Complexity" will be presented by SDM alum and ESD Ph.D. Daniel Sturtevant. The event is free and open to all.

Founded in November 2010, the series is an MIT SDM distance learning offering that disseminates information on how to employ systems thinking to address the engineering, management, and socio-political components of today's complex challenges. All webinars feature research conducted by SDM faculty, alumni, students, and industry partners, and are open to all at no charge.

According to Pat Hale, Director of the SDM Fellows Program, webinar topics have included leadership, innovation, software, product development and design, inventory management, safety, organizational transformation, Lean, and more. Because industries represented by the audience vary from defense, automotive, and aerospace to healthcare, energy, new drug development, and others, each presentation is designed to offer attendees a high-level view of how to apply systems thinking to complex challenges in their own domains.

"Literally thousands have attended the live webinars or listened to on-demand recordings," said Hale. "We've received reports that in some companies, teams watch them to learn together. In addition, many folks attend regularly, no matter what the topic."

The series was created by SDM Communications Director Lois Slavin, with the support of SDM Operations Manager Christine Bates. Each webinar is hosted by Lois, with Steven Derocher serving as technical director
.
Access to previously recorded on-demand webinars can be found on our webinars page.

SDMs Join First MEMPC Simulation Competition

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 18:31:00 +0000

By Lynne Weiss

SDM Fellow Terence Teo was a member of
the winning team in the MEMPC's first
simulation competition. He and his
teammates each received a Nexus 7
wifi tablet.
Photo by Dave Schultz

Several SDM students recently had the opportunity to build their systems thinking capabilities and expand their professional networks when they participated in a simulation competition organized by the Master of Engineering Management Programs Consortium (MEMPC).

Founded in 2006, MEMPC was formed to raise awareness of the value of the master of engineering management (MEM) and similar degrees, as well as to share best practices, curricular innovations, and information among member institutions, including MIT, Northwestern, Stanford, Cornell, Duke, and the University of Southern California.

Mark Werwath, director of Northwestern's MEM program, proposed the simulation competition to give MEMPC students an experience comparable to the business case and business plan competitions offered in traditional MBA programs. He also hoped that the multi-school teams would help students expand their professional networks beyond their own institutions.

The competition, MEMPC's first, was managed and moderated by Jeff Lefebvre and David Semb of PriSim Business War Games. Both men are also adjunct faculty in Northwestern's MEM program. "Business simulations are great at building systems thinking capability," Semb said in a recent interview. Lefebvre noted that simulations help engineers let go of the idea that there are "right" solutions to business problems.

The five SDMs who participated were Brian Hendrix, Daniel Camacho Gonzalez, Terence Teo, Shiladitya Ray, and Dexter Tan. Each was assigned to a different multi-school team that played the role of a company in the domestic automobile industry. Teams managed short- and long-term objectives and made decisions about how to interact with competitors, what new products to introduce, and how to support new products. Each team was responsible for establishing its own organization. "Teams could organize by function or by product line," LeFebvre said, noting that there is no one right way to organize any business or team.

The competition began February 11 after students had a chance to review the competition manual and explore PriSim's website. The winning team was announced on March 11.

Teo, whose team won, said his group began by identifying its company's strengths and weaknesses as well as market opportunities and trends. Teo felt that a big part of his team's success was the willingness of members to agree on a strategy—to maintain their product line of high-value cars with a small market and big margins. "We kept our focus on upgrading existing models and on introducing new vehicles quickly," he said.

Teo also credited his team's success to the members' respect for each other's views. One of the few areas of serious disagreement related to pricing. To get advice on this issue, they used one of the two "lifeline calls" to Semb that each team was allowed. Semb suggested they compare the prices dealers paid for cars to what they charged customers. "We realized we had to set a price that was competitive, and that let dealers make higher profits in order to motivate them," Teo said.

Hendrix said he volunteered for the simulation because he wanted to "reinforce some of the real-life experiences I've had and put some of the theory I've learned into action." A product development engineer for Ford Motor Co., Hendrix learned from the opportunity to make executive decisions regarding supply chain and brand management.

Although only one team came out on top, Lefebvre said that in his experience, participants on the teams that struggle most often learn the most. Tan, who works for Continental AG, a German auto manufacturer, agreed. Although his team finished fifth, Tan said he learned leadership skills and the importance of planning and communication. He was enthusiastic about the experience because it provided a "risk-free platform" for testing competitive innovation strategies that he has learned about in class.

Christine Meier, SDM '13: Diversity, Organizational Transformation, and Systems Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (sdmweb) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:13:00 +0000

By Lois Slavin, SDM Communications Director

Christine Meier
Photo by Dave Schultz

Ask Dr. Christine Meier, SDM '13, about ongoing themes in her career and her response will be brief and emphatic: "Diversity and a desire to help others".

Diversity is evident both academically and professionally. She holds a Ph.D. in human factors psychology from the University of South Dakota and an M.S. in educational research from West Chester University.

Moreover, Meier has worked in a wide diversity of settings, including Fortune 500 and 1000 companies, the U.S. federal government, a start-up, and a company of one that she founded. Often her roles involved technical, managerial, and/or leadership responsibilities. And the industries ranged from health care, financial services and mining safety to computer manufacturing and enterprise software.

The other theme of Meier's career, helping others, is illustrated by her ongoing work in ergonomics, specifically mitigating repetitive motion disorders and making software accessible to users with disabilities. Her intention to serve humankind has become an ever-increasing emphasis in her career choices over the years.

For example, take Meier's work at Ameriprise Financial. Hired to lead an already fully mature program to reduce repetitive stress injuries, she collaborated with the General Accounting Office (GAO) on an in-depth investigation of the program, which the GAO later identified as one of the five most successful programs in the U.S.

Meier said that the GAO found common elements that each program shared: management commitment; employee involvement; identification of problem jobs; training and education; and medical management. These later formed the basis for ergonomic Occupational Health Safety and Health (OSHA) regulations. And Meier subsequently adapted several elements for inclusion in an accessibility program at BMC Software that she created and led and for a program she developed from the ground up for Unisys.

Having already earned doctoral and masters degrees and made significant contributions in diverse business arenas while helping others, why would Meier return to academia for yet another degree? And why SDM?

"Virtually all of my understanding concerning enterprise design and transformation has been through on-the-job experiences, so the SDM curriculum will provide specific, state-of-the-art methodologies and tools taught by expert MIT faculty," she said, adding that she is currently a research assistant for Professor Deborah Nightingale's Enterprise Architecting course. "I look forward to learning about and employing a systematic, systems-based approach for enterprise transformation that, along with my past experiences, would enrich my future work and provide exceptional value to my next employer. SDM's focus on the technical, managerial and leadership components of success, as well as the opportunity to work on team-based projects with SDM fellows who, like me, have significant experience, offers exceptional opportunities".

And not surprisingly, given her focus on helping others, Meier added an excerpt from First Lady Michelle Obama's speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention that is one of her guiding principles:

"When you work hard and done well and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. No. You reach back and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed."

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Security Threats in Integrated Circuits

What Is Hardware Security?

Confidentiality

Integrity

Authenticity

Types of Attacks

Hack Attack

Shack Attack

Lab Attack

Fab Attack

Trust in Integrated Circuits

Design

Specification

Third-party IPs and Libraries

CAD Tools

Fabrication

Manufacturing Test

Design Abstraction Levels

Ensuring Authenticity

Deep Dive into Hardware Trojans

Difficulty of Detection

Taxonomy of Trojans

Physical Characteristics

Trigger Characteristics

Current Trojan Detection Methods

Chip-level Methods

Architecture-level Trojan Detection

Conclusion

Appendix: Short Cases of IC Vulnerability[xvi]

Mobile Sector

Consumer Electronics and Embedded Sector

Notes

Understanding Patient Wait Times at the LV Prasad Eye Institute

The process

The findings

Next steps

About the Authors

Supply Chain and Risk Management

Making the Right Risk Decisions to Strengthen Operations Performance

Contents

Executive Summary

When Mature Risk Management and Operational Resilience Pay Off

Why This Study?

The Challenges of a More Global Supply Chain

What Are the Drivers of Supply Chain Operations Complexity?

What Are the Sources of Supply Chain Risk?

To What Parameters Are Supply Chain Operations Most Sensitive?

How Do Companies Mitigate Against Disruptions?

The Supply Chain and Risk Management Maturity Framework

Strengthen Supply Chain and Risk Management

The Seven Supply Chain and Risk Enablers of Maturity

Four Levels of Maturity in Supply Chain Operations and Risk Management

How Mature Are Company Capabilities?

Key Insights—More Mature Capabilities Lead to Better Operational Performance

Appendix A: Survey Demographics and Trends

Appendix B: Key Performance Indicator Definitions

About the Project Team

Professor David Simchi-Levi, MIT

Ioannis M. Kyratzoglou

Constantine G. Vassiliadis

References

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MIT SDM Sponsors Conference on Big Data and Systems Thinking

Appendix: Short Cases of IC Vulnerability^[xvi]