Xuan-Linh Tran

Optimising the content and delivery of postgraduate education in engineering management for government and industry

Optimising the content and delivery of postgraduate education requires a systems approach, and attention to a number of issues, the most important of which is the recognition that the needs (requirements) of postgraduate students employed in the workforce are different to those of traditional full-time students. This paper describes such a systems approach and addresses those issues in the context of a proposed new Master of Engineering Management Degree for implementation at the University of South Australia (UniSA).

Tool selection process and its management for small and medium enterprises in defence projects

To be self-reliant and competitive in winning and maintaining defence contracts, the Australian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need to improve their systems capability. By systems capability it is meant effectual use of sound systems engineering (SE) processes and effective use of SE tools. Unlike most large organisations, the Australian SMEs have not widely employed SE processes and tools in their work. It appears that the current SE software tools do not effectively aid SMEs with their work and that tool supplierspsila marketing does not specifically target SMEs. To aid SMEs in boosting their systems capability, thereby enabling them to effectively obtain and maintain defence contracts, this work, as part of an on-going research on a framework for tool selection for SMEs in defence, attempts to define a tool selection process and its management. This paper describes the current situation of the Australian SMEs and the issues they are facing with in regards to SE tools. It also proposes the requirements for a tool selection process for SMEs and the management of this process. Finally it discusses the initial findings of the on-going research.

Optimal allocation of support to small manufacturing enterprises in defense projects

Small and medium enterprises play a vital role in projects to develop Australian military systems. Their recognized lack of systems engineering capability, however, can impart risk to the projects in which they participate, unless funding is allocated appropriately to them to improve their systems engineering capabilities. In this work we determine an optimal funding allocation to these enterprises that will minimize risk to the projects by formulating this funding allocation as an assignment problem and then solving it using the Taguchi method.