Courses
Strategic Decision Making – ½ Day
Use the Systems Engineering Tailored for Science and Technology (SETFST) process to define
your Program’s needs, identify the technologies that will get you there, and utilize
your budget in the most effective way possible. SETFST combines a number of processes
and techniques to the analysis of alternatives for your specific research. The course
will enable you to apply a rigorous decision-support process to improve the probability
of success and manage risk. Further advance your skills in the courses below.
Defining Customer Desirements – ½ Day
If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s hard to know when you get there.
When planning a development Program or Project, it is critical to know what you
want the resulting technology or product to be. That’s often easier said than done.
This SynGenics course will help you learn how to capture and negotiate customer desirements
based on important questions:
- Who are your customers?
- What do they need?
- What do they want?
- What are they willing to pay for?
Developing a clearly defined set of evaluation criteria through desirements
helps you define the trade space, set the course, measure progress, and improve your likelihood for success.
Multicriterial Desirability Optimization Methodology – 2 Days
The optimal solution is the best balance among the many desired characteristics
(e.g., fuel efficiency, weight, cost). The Desirability Optimization Methodology leads
to better products, less variability, lower costs, and more efficient program execution.
This is a proven, systematic approach to specifying the best settings of design variables
to produce a robust product. It enables you to explore the design space and prospect for
best value. If the gold exists, this methodology will lead you to it. Tight budgets make it
crucial that funds go where they will yield the best results. SynGenics will teach you this
powerful methodology to get the most from your research investment. You will learn to
establish set-points for design variables to consistently realize the optimal set of desired
characteristics for your technology or product.
Technical Writing – 1 Day
Tell your story, explain your Project or Program, advocate for your
technology, and make the winning case for its adoption using language that is accurate,
understandable, and compelling. SynGenics experts can show you how to structure and complete
those critical writing tasks to create professional documents including Statements of Objectives
(SOOs), Broad Area Announcements (BAAs), case studies, briefings, and technical reports.
Not your everyday grammar class, Technical Writing gives you the tools you need to recognize
a good work product and develop documentation that goes beyond the minimum requirement. You
will learn to prepare documents that get you noticed and elicit the results you want for
your Program and your career. For course specifics and offerings near you, contact SynGenics (614) 638-9522.
Objective:
This one-day workshop provides important methods to improve your communication skills
from idea through organization to first draft and beyond editing and proofreading
to final draft and publication. You will learn to
- Select the document format that most efficiently fulfills the need
- Make complex technical information understandable
- Write with clarity and precision
- Prepare professional documents for publication
Benefits:
Organization, audience, pattern, and process combine to focus your document
while illustrations, graphs, and charts give it impact and polish.
- Program support depends on building its case for future programs
- Technical writing is an important skill
- Good writing makes technical information accessible
- Well-written documents avoid re-editing and save time
- Professionally prepared documents get the attention they deserve
Course Content:
Identifying your audience
- Secrets to writing well
- Codifying the purpose of your document
- Organizing your material and focus
- Choosing the right document format
- Handling the BAA, SOO, Technical Report
- Keys to delivering professional products the first time
- Techniques for Interviewing SMEs and writing their information into your document
- Clarity, Precision, Style, and the First Draft
- Overcoming Writer's Block
- Working with Collaborators
- Presenting complex technical information understandably
- Using illustrations, tables, and presentation materials
- Producing final drafts that impress your superiors
- Polish and Publish
Course Cost:
$295
How to Register:
By Phone: (614) 638-9522 (Talk with Victoria)
By E-mail: Victoria@SynGenics.com
SEADS Toolkit – 2 Day
The Systems Engineering Analysis Decision Support (SEADS)
Toolkit automates Systems Engineering programs to help you choose the best approach to achieve success
in your science and/or technology program.
SynGenics experts will teach you and your team to use
this powerful tool to create advantages that propel your
program ahead toward technology transition, quickly, easily, and efficiently.
Objective:
In this hands-on course, you will learn to use
the SEADS Toolkit to analyze and support complex decisions allowing you to
satisfy multiple, competing criteria. Results of the analysis help you
make good investment decisions, quantify and manage risk, and build a strong business case.
Benefits:
- The analysis process embedded in the SEADS Toolkit facilitates making rational decisions.
- Software design enables making changes and regenerating results as needed.
- Built-in traceability makes decisions defensible and progress visible
- Quantifies desirability, risk, and tradeoffs. Ideal for Pre-Milestone A preferred system analysis.
- Value analysis provides content for a strong business case.
Course Content:
- Overview of decision process
- Capturing desirements
- Customers, desirement classes, required fields
- Desirement instances, values of interest, d-curves
- Constructed customer and exit criteria
- Generating Alternatives
- Evaluating Alternatives
- Scoring against desirements, generating technology worksheets
- Value scorecard generation, interpretation
- Sensitivity analysis, trade-space exploration
- Generating documentation
How to Register:
By Phone: 614.638.9522 (Talk with Victoria)
By Fax: Complete the registration form and fax it to 740.369.6902
By E-mail: Victoria@SynGenics.com
Course Costs:
$675 per person for participants not sponsored by AFRL/RB
Check or credit card: Visa, MasterCard, or Government IMPAC
Statistical Design of Experiments (DOE) – 2 Days
What Is DOE?
Statistical Design of Experiments is a powerful body of statistically based
techniques that allow a scientist or engineer to efficiently characterize a design
space and to establish the link between cause and effect for processes that have
multiple input factors and associated interactions. Through judicious selection of
sampling points within the design domain and statistical analysis of results,
a person can simultaneously measure and identify those factors that impact a
process and then can optimize their effects.
Any experimental scenario with identifiable causative factors and one or more measurable
responses (R) can be a candidate for DOE and associated model development. The major difference
between test programs that use DOE and more traditional test programs is the simultaneous,
patterned variation of several contributing factors as opposed to one-factor-at-a-time processing.
Develop the skills necessary to fully understand your options and the short- and long-term
ramifications of each choice when determining the best path forward for your Program.
When the consequences of making incorrect decisions are high, DOE provides concrete
evidence of the better choice. In developing a new technology, DOE can provide accurate
estimates of the effect of utilizing each combination of variables. SynGenics has provided
this level of analysis for clients throughout the Air Force Research Laboratory for years.
With SynGenics’s introductory course in DOE, you will learn to design experiments, analyze results,
and develop a predictive model of system behavior. DOE is a powerful tool that can help you
optimize solutions. Advanced DOE further develops your ability to direct the future of your Program.
Why Use DOE?
The key methodology that makes all the disciplines work together to
yield the best overall formulation is called Desirability.
Desirability is the latest advance in optimization technology.
Smart D Technology
DOE helps you:
- Systematically analyze the nature and cause of variation using controlled testing;
- Maximize the research benefits of testing by producing high-quality data;
- Minimize the resources needed to perform a test program.
- (DOE-based test programs typically cut cost and time expenses by 50%.);
Course Objectives
Students will be able to:
-
Plan, execute, and analyze a two-level statistically designed experiment;
-
Understand and assess more complex two-level statistically designed
experiments such as those presented by Air Force contractors;
-
Be cognizant of advanced DOE methodologies that go
beyond the basic two-level designs;
Course Topics and Descriptions
The SynGenics two-day Basic DOE course presents all the critical
elements of two-level factorial designs. Course topics include:
- Quick walk through a simple designed experiment;
- Important pre-test planning;
- The Pre-Test Planning Process;
- Identifying factors, levels, interactions, and responses;
- Hidden dangers (discussed throughout);
- How to use Orthogonal Arrays and Triangular Tables;
- DOE data-analysis methods;
- Model building and use;
- Incorporating Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) into DOE;
- Adding Significance and Confidence with DOE;
- Survey of advanced methods;
In-class group exercises walk each participant through the DOE process
in progressive levels of complexity, as new material is covered. By course end,
the participant will be well equipped to design and conduct a
sophisticated two-level factorial experiment and evaluate the
resulting data using a variety of statistical analysis techniques including ANOVA.
Course Cost
Learn to set up designed experiments and perform DOE analysis
in two days. Cost is $700 per student.
Supplied Materials
Each participant will receive:
- A notebook of the course;
- CD containing several basic DOE Excel spreadsheets;
- An electronic (.pdf) copy of the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Engineering Statistics Handbook,
(also available as a download on
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/
About the Instructor
John C. Sparks has nearly 34 years of experience as a
practicing scientist, engineer, and manager.
He recently retired from the
Air Force Research Laboratory
where he was a key proponent of DOE.
Mr. Sparks designed and presented several AFRL-wide workshops
including DOE, SPC, Metrics, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator,
and a variety of safety/security briefings.
He brings over 15 years of AFRL training experience into the
DOE classroom. Mr. Sparks joined SynGenics Corporation in September, 2007.
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Tinker-Toy Catapult Diagram
This is a catapault designed by SynGenics during one of the courses. Click the image to
see a full size version of the catapult.
Statistical Design of Experiments is a powerful body of statistically based
techniques that allow a scientist or engineer to efficiently characterize a design space
DOE-based test programs typically cut cost and time expenses by 50%.
Two-day course does quick walk through a simple designed experiment.
The instructor, John C. Sparks has nearly 34 years of experience as a practicing scientist, engineer, and manager.
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