May 2009 Speaker Meeting PDF Print E-mail
Written by INCOSE-LA   

By Jorg Largent with inputs by Ricardo Arteaga

Elaine Thorpe, a Boeing Technical Fellow in Human Systems Integration (HSI), spoke to the Chapter at the May Speaker Meeting. Her presentation reflected her leadership of the HSI Functional Skill Team and her 23 years with the Boeing Company.

Elaine’s presentation covered the waterfront of technical challenges facing the HSI professionals in the aerospace industry — challenges that impact the application of the systems engineering process. The presentation explored operator interface design from its traditional focus on ergonomics and cockpit “knob and dial design” to the difficult problems that challenge HSI practitioners today. The challenge is wrought by changes in the definition of HSI brought on by the expanding system complexity and increasing demand for reduced human involvement. Software modeling is an important tool in addressing this challenge. Blended into this challenge is the perennial challenge to reduce system and development costs in the face of a trend of projects delivering less, costing more, and taking longer [see article on the April Speaker Meeting].

Complications include information and knowledge management, balancing situation awareness with human workload and performance constraints, expanding mission complexity on shrinking crew complements, and software modeling of human behavior.

The emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River was cited as something that went well and as an illustration of the challenge to the proper execution of the systems engineering process. One perspective of the challenge to the execution of the systems engineering process is to execute the systems engineering process in a manner that will produce systems that perform in a manner similar to the performance of the “system” of an Airbus 320 and the crew that successfully executed the water landing after a catastrophic loss of all engine power. As the aerospace industry moves forward to a time when software controls much of what is done on aircraft, we must ensure that the way humans evaluate the situation and make critical decisions is built into the software.

HSI is a combination of skills working within a systems engineering environment to apply human cognitive characteristics to the development of military, commercial and space vehicles. Some of the skills are human factors, psychology, bio-medical, and aerospace engineering.

A new challenge is found in the expectations of a “techsavvy” population — a population of people who will be using future systems but who will bring with them experiences and expectations based on the technology of cell phones, video game controllers, and computers that they are using today. In some respects, the architecture of future systems is being determined by experiences of future users as they text-message and otherwise use computers today.

Elaine noted that one challenge is the development of tools that help engineers perform the effective allocation of functions in complex systems, and metrics that allow the engineers to know if the allocation is correct.

The evening was highly informative and educational in term of Human Systems Integration and the challenges faced by the aerospace industry. Indeed, there are broader challenges beyond the aerospace industry, and this evening’s presentation offered some deep insights into the HSI challenge to the application of the systems engineering process.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 27 May 2009 18:12 )