Sample MANU1381 Sustainable Engineering Systems and Environment Assignment

MANU1381 Sustainable Engineering Systems and Environment Assignment Sample

Overview

This task evaluates your ability to understand systems approach in engineering management. You will need to select, investigate and present an engineering system, its structure, included subsystems, and examine relationships among the subsystems. You are going to identify stakeholders and their expectations. Finally, you will identify problems, or challenges, existing in the system, and propose an appropriate solution, based on selected systems approach.

Assessment details

Task 1: Systems concepts

Examine the system under study in terms of its environment, complexity and system dynamics.
Describe and examine the relationships between the sub-systems and the system as a whole.
Evaluate the role of various stakeholders, shareholders’ expectations and the measurable requirements.

b) Explore how any future actions, or changes to any of the subsystems/elements, will affect the system as a whole.

Task 2: Systems methodology

Based on the system described in Task 1:

Apply the chosen methodology to the problems and discuss its potential issues and limitations.

Solution

Subsystems objectives/purpose

There are several subsystems available in Boeing and each of them completes a predetermined task within the organization and plays an important role in the overall development of the organization. The subdivisions of Boeing are listed as follows:

Business development and strategy: The subdivision is generally tasked with the creation of a business plan or a strategy Boeing follows so that it can gain maximum profit and achieve all its objectives within the stipulated time for assignment help.

Communications: The subdivision deals with public relations so that Boeing can continue to keep its positive brand image and the subdivision also handles internal communication within the company so that all the information can be properly relayed to the required personnel.

Finance: The general task for this subdivision is to take financial decisions for both the internal and external affairs of Boeing and they are also tasked with keeping a track of all the expenditures and incomes within Boeing.

Engineering, operations and technology: Since Boeing is a company that manufactures aeroplanes it is a necessity for them to have a dedicated subdivision that deals with the technicalities of producing an aeroplane and that includes the engineers that work on the plane to the people that are working in operations and even technical associates [1].

Human resource and administration: The department focuses on recruiting new job applicants and training them and even looking into the current employees and making sure that they are working with the proper skillset within Boeing.

Internal governance: The subdivision is tasked with dealing with the business objectives of Boeing and looks into the shareholders as well as the board members and comes to a unanimous decision that would satisfy the majority.

Legal department: Every company needs a legal department and Boeing is no exception because this subdivision deals with the l matters starting from patents to cases against the company.

Public policy: The subdivision is tasked with setting up a set of standards and laws which would be implemented within Boeing and they work as regulatory measures against a particular action.

Sales: The subdivision is simply tasked with selling the services and products that are developed by Boeing and they must generate a good number of sales so that the company can stay profitable and continue to achieve its objectives.

Elements of the subsystem and their attributes

After understanding the different subsystems that are present in Boing it is necessary to understand all the attributes that the systems possess. The attributes for the individual departments are listed as follows:

Business development and strategy: The elements generally involve the usage of data driven decision making and sales funneling to implement the strategies.

Communications: The attributes include internal communication channels within the organizations and departments as well as communication channels with strategic alliances.

Finance: The attributes involve reporting financial statements, budgeting that are important for the organization [2].

Engineering, operations and technology: The attributes of the subsystem include some type of raw input that is used for the manufacture process and the staff that operate on the raw input to produce the output [4].

Human resource and administration: Generally, the attributes constitute employee recruitment, employee training and maintaining employee retention [3].

Internal governance: The attributes involve management of the overall system through monitoring and including risk assessments so that the organization can take the correct action as per that assessment.

Legal department: The attributes for this subsystem include legal documents, dispute negotiations and other tasks that represent the organization’s legal prowess.

Public policy: The attributes include implementation of policies, maintenance as well as evaluation of the said policies.

Sales: The attributes include generation of market demand for the system, collection of sales funds and procuring the clients so that the system remains profitable.

Relationships of subsystems

The subtopic covers the different dependencies that each of the subsystems of Boeing has with one another and the details are covered in detail so that an understanding can be formed about the connection of the different dependencies and the importance of each of the subsystem in the Boeing system. Some of the subsystems like the legal department or the finance department play a major role in keeping the organization functioning and therefore they are given more importance but it does not mean that the other subsystems are not important since they also play a major role in their own sector and need to be addressed as well.

Relation between the subsystems
Source: (Developed by author)

System complexity

There have been some complexities in the system of Boeing wherein they were unable to conduct proper tests on some of their 737 aeroplanes and that led to plane crashes on two different occasions and that was caused because of multiple reasons starting from lack of staffing in the engineering department and issues related to their business strategy which focused on the sale of 737 flights but they were not in the condition to be sold right away and needed much more testing. What the engineers failed to see was that the working of the aeroplane depended on the functioning of the isolated parts together and they had not given much time of testing those components in an isolated condition which may have led to the complexity. The legal department is also facing issues because of these claims and there has been a problematic situation in the Boeing system which has caused some risk for the investors and stakeholders as the company is facing issues because of different reasons. It was one of the biggest mistakes of Boeing to allow the sale of the 737 flight after which the company’s value definitely took a hit and their reputation was damaged as well.

Dynamics of systems

To understand the dynamics of the system it is important to understand the systems influence the overall complexity of the system. In the case of Boeing its stock which can be considered part of the financial part is considered as a chaotic subsystem behaviour because the value of anything in the stock market is never stable and keeps changing after regular intervals. Generally chaotic behaviour can be represented using the following equation:

The behaviour is integrated over a time to understand the change in the system through this dynamic behaviour. The feedback also affects the change in the dynamic behaviour of the system and in this case new of Boeing could have an effect on the stock market price of its shares. While compiling the chaotic behaviour of the subsystem in Boeing it can be represented in the following manner:

One of the main factors that has affected the system dynamics of the company is the launch of 737 flight which caused major issues and legal issues which made the systems behaviour chaotic and it was not following any specific pattern.

Stakeholders

The stakeholders of Boeing can be roughly divided into internal and external stakeholders. Within the internal stakeholders there are employees, management and owners and in the case of Boeing Dave Calhoun is the CEO of company and a major stakeholder for the company. Coming to the external stakeholders there are suppliers as well as some external members that hold quite a lot of shares of the company which include Newport Trust Co. with a share of 7.52% of the company and The Vanguard Group, Inc. just to name a few of the major shareholders that play a major role in the business decision-making process of the company [5].

Problem/challenge and identification
Problem/challenge description

Boeing as a company is not perfect and faces some challenges that it must overcome to fulfil its objectives. Some of the problems are given as follows:

• Constraints in the research and development department
• Inconsistencies in the delivery of 787 flights by Boeing
• $7.9 billion defence charges
• Engineering shortage as well as operational staff shortage.
• 737 market entry at high risk
• Decreased profitability
• Lack of dividend demoralizing for investors
• Unclear strategy and services
• Plunge in the market share

Problem context

The problem scope, in this case, can be divided into the individual subsystems and the problem can be identified in the case of Boeing. The first subsystem that is being affected is the business strategy and planning department which deals with the company’s business methodologies and the steps that they are willing to take to obtain their objectives. The issue lies in improper planning of strategies which has led to the current set of problems for the organization which include staffing issues as well as legal issues [6]. Since there is an issue with the business strategy department the human resource and administration department has also been affected because of this and they have been getting issues in the recruitment of required operations personnel and engineers which has led to short staffing in that particular department [7]. Since there are staffing issues, the engineers have been overworked which has led to them making some errors which could cost a lot of money to the organization. Since the engineering department was unable to do their work properly which led to the failure of one of the products the legal department had to deal with the dispute related to the faulty product in this case an aeroplane.

(Cost of Boeing shares from 2016-2022)

Selection of system methodology

After understanding the current problem, it can be said that the first issue that needs to be resolved is the procurement of capital that the company must gain to solve some of its issues. The procurement of capital would allow the company to use that capital and solve the issues that are related to the staffing of the recruits, legal disputes and even dividend issues. In this particular case, a hard system approach might be much more useful because it would handle both quantitative and qualitative issues. The methodology has its own set of benefits when compared to a soft approach but it must be kept in mind the goals that must be achieved to make an impact on the system and use that method to get the best possible output in the given scenario. When selecting the hard system approach, it must be kept in mind that the approach is rigid and does not change in accordance to the change in requirements but it should be able to cater to the immediate issue which is of the utmost importance.

Application of system methodology

The first thing to do when the capital is acquired is to find and train some recruits that can be sent to the engineering department so that the short staffing issues can be resolved. Moving onto the next step the legal disputes must be handled so that the brand image does not get hampered. Once the legal dispute is settled a focus on providing dividends to the investors can be considered which would mean that a greater number of potential investors would be interested to invest in the stock and the current investors would retain their stock [8]. When the issue of the interrelated subsystems is solved a new business strategy could be developed so that the current organizational goals can be achieved.

Conclusion

From the understanding of the above study, it can be concluded that there are several interdependent subsystems within Boeing and the performance of one department does affect the others indirectly [9]. The company has faced some issues with their profits recently and they are required to take some necessary steps to deal with those problems and increase the profitability of the company once again. The relation between the company’s subsystems was properly understood so that the effect could be mapped out properly. once the relations were identified the root cause of the problems was found based on which a recommendation was provided for the subsystem and the application of the recommendation was also explained along with it. And with that, the study was concluded.

References