Transportation services and projects are delivered by multiple organizations and therefore effective systems engineering on these projects must traverse organizational boundaries. Each of the organizations across this complex supply chain faces different issues – and therefore needs to tailor its systems engineering to cope with difficult problems. However, to deliver effective transport services to customers, this systems engineering needs to be integrated.
So how do we systems engineer the supply chain to enable effective, cross‐organizational systems engineering? What roles should customers and suppliers take in the overall SE program? What are the key challenges we need to address to deliver the low cost, reliable, environmentally‐friendly, high capacity and safe transport services our customers want to use?
The panelists will explore these questions from different perspectives – from designing national transportation infrastructure to building trains. We'll hear from five perspectives:
For each perspective we'll explore: What are the primary systems challenges? Which aspects of systems engineering add most value? What aspects cause the greatest difficulty? What changes would make the supply chain more effective?
Audience discussion is sought to explore:
How does the experience of the transportation industry SE compare or contrast to other industries? Are the viewpoints of various contributors common? Are interdependencies being overlooked?
National government's transport administration ‐ focusing on keeping people moving in our major cities and getting a decent return from investment in major enhancements
Rail agency – focusing on integrating infrastructure, vehicles and command and control to deliver effective transport services
Major rail system upgrade program – focusing on delivering major enhancements with minimum cost and risk
Systems consultant – focusing on specifying the procurement of integrated systems to meet agency's business needs while navigating sub‐system supplier capabilities and systems integration risk
Sub‐system supplier – focusing on delivering vehicles, infrastructure or command and control solutions that meet the market and specific customers need
What Keynes called “technological unemployment” is not yet upon us. Many agree that, if or when it is upon us, society will be forced to pay a basic income. This chapter argues that we shouldn’t wait. The chance of mass unemployment is credible. The outcome would be terrible. And a “precautionary basic income” is relatively cheap. So, much like buying a fire extinguisher for one’s home, we should take precautionary action before the risk of technological mass unemployment becomes likely. This is consistent with a cost-benefit analysis, when the benefits of business-as-usual are appropriately discounted. Precautionary action may well cost us nothing in the longer run. But even if it will cost something in forgone growth, the rich world shouldn’t worry, for three reasons: (1) The more we gain in GDP, the less and less it does for our happiness; (2) work for GDP is expensive in time lost; and (3) further GDP gains have less value than comparable security benefits to the less well-off.
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