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This article explores the pros and cons for reducing working hours in Europe. To arrive to an informed judgment we review critically the theoretical and empirical literature, mostly from economics, concerning the relation between working hours on the one hand, and productivity, employment, quality of life, and the environment, on the other. We adopt a binary economics distinction between capital and labor productiveness, and are concerned with how working hours may be reduced without harming the earning capacity of workers. There are reasons to believe that reducing working hours may absorb some unemployment, especially in the short-run, even if less than what is advocated by proponents of the proposal. Further, there may well be strong benefits for the quality of peoples’ lives. Environmental benefits are likely but depend crucially on complementary policies or social conditions that will ensure that the time liberated will not be directed to resource-intensive or environmentally harmful consumption. It is questionable whether reduced working hours are sustainable in the long-term given resource limits and climate change. We conclude that while the results of reducing working hours are uncertain, this may be a risk worth taking, especially as an interim measure that may relieve unemployment while other necessary structural changes are instituted.

This article explores the complex relationship between environmental regulation, innovation, and sustainable development within the context of an increasingly globalizing economy. The economic development, environment, and employment aspects of sustainable development are emphasized. We contend that the most crucial problem in achieving sustainability is lock-in or path dependency due to (1) the failure to envision, design, and implement policies that achieve co-optimization, or the mutually reinforcing, of social goals, and (2) entrenched economic and political interests that gain from the present system and advancement of its current trends. The article argues that industrial policy, environmental law and policy, and trade initiatives must be ‘opened up’ by expanding the practice of multi-purpose policy design, and that these policies must be integrated as well. Sustainable development requires stimulating revolutionary technological innovation through environmental, health, safety, economic, and labor market regulation. Greater support for these changes must also be reinforced by ‘opening up the participatory and political space’ to enable new voices to contribute to integrated thinking and solutions.

The long time scales associated with complex system design and operation necessitate front-end systems engineering methodologies that enable consideration of alternative futures. This paper advances scenario planning techniques through a parameterization and ordering of potential future contexts and stakeholder expectations (e.g., articulated system attributes, available technology, funding levels, and supporting infrastructures). After surveying existing approaches for scenario planning, a methodology for specifying and analyzing large numbers of alternative system time lines is presented. A satellite radar case study is used to motivate and illustrate the value of this approach. Benefits of the methodology include: (1) broader and more rigorous consideration of alternative future needs, contexts, and time lines, (2) identification of gaps in traditionally-derived scenario sets, (3) identification of passively value-robust system alternatives, and (4) providing a basis for evaluating system evolution strategies that enable sustainment of value delivery across potential time lines., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Systems Engineering Advancement Research Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lean Advancement Initiative

As the aerospace workforce braces itself for the 'silver tsunami,' more emphasis is needed on how to develop systems skills in engineering workforce research has shown this knowledge is tacit and based in experience. However, with nearly one-third of the industry's employees eligible for retirement, this systems-level knowledge is at risk of being lost. This paper focuses on the team as the unit of analysis and the elements of design process and team culture that foster collaborative systems thinking teams. Eight pilot interviews, ten full case studies and 14 abbreviated case studies were used to explore 'collaborative systems thinking,' or team-level systems thinking. From these data a definition of collaborative systems thinking is derived and generalizations about collaborative systems thinking teams are presented., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lean Advancement Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Systems Engineering Advancement Research Initiative, United States. Dept. of Defense (National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowships)

Technological advances such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) have increased the feasibility and importance of effectively integrating information from an ever widening number of systems within and across enterprises. A key difficulty of achieving this goal comes from the pervasive heterogeneity in all levels of information systems. A robust solution to this problem needs to be adaptable, extensible, and scalable. In this paper, we identify the deficiencies of traditional semantic integration approaches. The COntext INterchange (COIN) approach overcomes these deficiencies by declaratively representing data semantics and using a mediator to create the necessary conversion programs from a small number of conversion rules. The capabilities of COIN is demonstrated using an example with 150 data sources, where COIN can automatically generate the over 22,000 conversion programs needed to enable semantic interoperability using only six parametizable conversion rules. This paper presents a framework for evaluating adaptability, extensibility, and scalability of semantic integration approaches. The application of the framework is demonstrated with a systematic evaluation of COIN and other commonly practiced approaches., Mitre Corporation, Singapore-MIT Alliance, Malaysia University of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Suruga Bank Ltd.

Increased recycling, product redesign and substitution can improve firm resilience in the face of uncertainties in materials availability. The delays involved in implementing these strategies may result in unprepared firms losing market share to competitors who are better prepared to address these challenges. This paper will expand from previous work in this area by examining the statistical significance of the effect of recycling in the face of limited supply. It has been shown that the timing and magnitude of a supply shutdown can influence the magnitude of price response. On average, increased recycling is a means for stabilizing price effects owing to its faster response times.

The paper presents a vision for enhancing anticipatory capacity of engineering organizations, with a goal of enabling the design of systems that can deliver sustained value as the world changes. Anticipatory capacity is the capacity of an organization to continuously develop and apply knowledge acquired through a structured approach to anticipate changing scenarios as needs and context change over time, While anticipation has always had a role in designing systems; the availability of model-based methods has significant implications. Anticipatory capacity extends from three key elements: competencies, methods, and a model-based environment. The paper discusses ongoing and planned research in support of establishing anticipatory capacity in organizations by leveraging the opportunities of model-based engineering., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Systems Engineering Advancement Research Initiative

Engineering systems is a field of scholarship focused on developing fundamental theories and methods to address the challenges of large-scale complex systems in context of their socio-technical environments. The authors describe facets of their recent and ongoing research within the field of engineering systems to develop constructs and methods for architecting enterprises engaged in system-of-systems (SoS) engineering,. The ultimate goal of the research is to develop a framework for characterizing, designing, and evaluating SoS enterprise architectures throughout the system lifespan as various forces result in entering/exiting of constituent systems, changing environment, and shifting enterprise profile. The nature of systems-of-systems demands constructs for multi-dimensional architectural descriptions, as well as methods for design and evaluation that employ dynamic approaches. In this paper, two important elements in an emerging framework are described, including a holistic enterprise architecting framework and an epoch-based analysis method for examining possible futures of the SoS enterprise., MIT Systems Engineering Advancement Research Initiative, MIT Lean Advancement Initiative

An important role of system designers is to effectively explore the tradespace of alternatives when making design decisions during concept phase. As systems become more complex, formal methods to enable good design decisions are essential; this can be empowered through a tradespace exploration paradigm. This paper demonstrates the use of the Pareto Trace and associated metrics to identify system alternatives across tradespaces with high degrees of passive value robustness—alternatives that continue to deliver value to stakeholders in spite of changes in needs (attributes) or context. A value-driven tradespace approach is used to represent the baseline performance versus cost of a large number of system alternatives. The classical notion of Pareto Set is extended to identify alternatives and their characteristics that lead to their inclusion in Pareto Sets across changing contexts. Using a lowearth orbiting satellite case example, five types of context changes are used to demonstrate this method: 1) addition or subtraction of attributes; 2) change in the priorities of attributes; 3) change in single attribute utility function shapes; 4) change in multiattribute utility aggregation function; and 5) addition of new decision maker. This approach demonstrates the ability for system designers to pose questions about assessment of alternatives during early conceptual design. Suggestions for application of Pareto Trace beyond the case example are discussed and presented, including application of a “fuzziness” factor and statistical measures. In particular, distinctions from traditional sensitivity analysis are made, as well as linkages to dynamic analysis for discovery of generalized value robust alternatives., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lean Advancement Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Systems Engineering Advancement Research Initiative

The long time scales associated with complex system design and operation necessitate front-end systems engineering methodologies that enable consideration of alternative futures. This paper advances scenario planning techniques through a parameterization and ordering of potential future contexts and stakeholder expectations (e.g., articulated system attributes, available technology, funding levels, and supporting infrastructures). After surveying existing approaches for scenario planning, a methodology for specifying and analyzing large numbers of alternative system time lines is presented. A satellite radar case study is used to motivate and illustrate the value of this approach. Benefits of the methodology include: (1) broader and more rigorous consideration of alternative future needs, contexts, and time lines, (2) identification of gaps in traditionally-derived scenario sets, (3) identification of passively value-robust system alternatives, and (4) providing a basis for evaluating system evolution strategies that enable sustainment of value delivery across potential time lines., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Systems Engineering Advancement Research Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lean Advancement Initiative

It is a common view that the assembly process heavily affects a product's final quality and cost. The continuously shortening product life cycle requires a faster response speed as well as a lower defect rate in assembly production. In this situation, assembly quality control is becoming one of the most demanding problems in the modern manufacturing environment. The main causes of assembly defects can be classified into four categories, i.e., improper design, defective part, variance in assembly system, and operator error. The first three categories have been studied for many decades. However, elements of the operator error have not been fully explored. In this paper, using a copier assembly as an example, the problem of assembly defects caused by mistakes of operators is investigated systematically. A novel defect-rate prediction model is derived from the study of two complexity factors, namely, the design-based assembly complexity factor and the process-based assembly complexity factor, which are defined according to the structure and production characteristics of the copier. Several case studies consistently demonstrate that the new prediction model is accurate and stable for evaluating the copier assembly quality. Moreover, another case study offered in this paper demonstrates that the prediction model can provide effective assistance in the improvement of assembly quality., National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 70672077)