International Council on Systems Engineering (Incose) Corporate Advisory Board (CAB)

The INCOSE CAB identified the need for more effective trade studies as one of their top five needs. Garry Roedler (one of the contributors) was CAB Chair when the need was identified. Max Berthold, the next CAB Chair, has continued the support. This book is one of the INCOSE activities to help meet this need. The INCOSE CAB has reviewed our plan for the book, and three INCOSE CAB representatives have become chapter authors, including Azad Madni, Cliff Whitcomb, and myself.

Incose Technical Directors

The Technical Director is a voting member of the INCOSE Board of Directors and has functional responsibility for Technical Operations. As the Technical Director at the time, Bill Miller (later one of our contributors) assigned this need to the INCOSE Decision Analysis Working Group. Paul Schreinemakers, the next Technical Director, has continued to support our effort.

Incose Decision Analysis Working Group

The INCOSE Decision Analysis Working Group, led by Frank Salvatore, has played a central role. Frank has supported our entire effort including the Decision Management input to the Systems Engineering Handbook, the Decision Management input to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK), and using working group meetings to recruit chapter authors, provide feedback on the book plan, and recruit chapter reviewers. Matt Cilli (chapter author) developed the Decision Management framework for the SE Handbook and SEBoK and provided more useful information on the framework in Chapter 5. Clifford Marini spearheaded all the computer code development efforts needed to generate many of the visualizations used in the examples of Chapter 5.

Chapter Authors

looseness=-1{}The chapter authors are systems engineering thought leaders and fully employed with senior academic, corporate, or government positions (see About the Authors). The role of the chapter authors was much more than writing their chapters. The authors provided recommendations on the content of the book, and each author has peer-reviewed one or two chapters, revised their chapters based on my reviews, and the reviews of two internal reviewers (authors of other chapters) and two external reviewers. Several authors contributed to more than one chapter. Based on when I received emails, most of their work on the book was done at night and on the weekends.

Chapter Reviewers

Our goal was to have every chapter reviewed by an academic and a practitioner who had not been participating in the book project. We asked for and received very helpful reviews. Many times, these reviews caused the authors to add material or reorganize the chapter to be clearer. The following individuals provided valuable chapter reviews that improved the quality of the book: Tyson Browning, Roger Burk, Chuck Ebeling, Tony Farina, Paul Garvey, Melissa Garber, Daniel McCarthy, Kim Needy, George Rebovich, Frank Salvatore, James “Jed” Richards, Valarie Sitterle, Gerardo Siva, Michael Vinarcik, and Adam Whitlock.

Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas

I would like to acknowledge the support of my department head, Ed Pohl (also a chapter author), who supported my participation in this project and provided a research assistant to help with the effort.

Research Assistant

This book would not have been possible in 1 year without the dedicated help of Andres Vargas, my research assistant for the past year. Andres performed an excellent literature search that provided references for all chapter authors. In addition, he performed many of the tasks required to align each chapter to the final format in the book. He is also preparing the solutions manual and the Excel files that will be provided on the Wiley book site.

Final Note

Any remaining errors of omission or commission are of course my responsibility.

Gregory S. Parnell, PhD, INCOSE Fellow
Editor
University of Arkansas
September 2016