25 April 2017
Engineering designers are increasingly aware of their impact on sustainability, and they often strive to create new products that improve economic, environmental, and social sustainability outcomes. Government policies (in an ideal world) also seek to address these three types of outcomes for the greater good of society. However, designers and policy-makers generally do not work together or systematically consider the impact of their actions on one another. A systems approach that encompasses engineering design and policy can account for the ways that industries, governmental bodies, and individual citizens respond to a new product or policy, including implications on market systems, social systems, and ecosystems. This talk presents a systems perspective on modeling and analyzing engineering design and policy decision-making, combining elements from different systems modeling techniques and a range of disciplinary analysis tools. This approach is explored through analyses of the U.S. automobile market and a mobile phone design problem.
Steven Hoffenson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Systems and Enterprises at Stevens Institute of Technology. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an M.S.E. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Hoffenson served as a Congressional Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2014-15. His research focuses on systems modeling, policy analysis, design methods and optimization, and sustainability.