Throughout 2021 members of the DMF team (Prof Hicks, Dr Snider and Dr Goudswaard) have been working closely with engineers at Malvern Panalytical to support their Systems Engineering function and continuous improvement. The collaborative project involved in-depth reviews of current tools, methods and practice; analysis of the issues experienced in recent programmes; and, consideration of possible improvement regimes/interventions. The project culminated with a set of recommendations covering people, process and practice that aim to further embed and maximise the value of Systems Engineering while also minimising additional overhead and avoiding the introduction of yet more tools!
Dr Maarten van Zalk (Head of Systems Engineering) said ”With their strong academic background as well as plenty of real-life examples from the industry, the DMF team has really helped us in analyzing our systems engineering approach, from processes and tools to cross-disciplinary development approaches and overall the role of people in this. A number of valuable recommendations have been made that can be readily implemented within the existing toolset and will help to bring renewed focus to the most essential elements of systems engineering.“
Andre Zwake (Director of Engineering) said “The DMF, have proven to be a real strategic partner with broad industry knowledge. They did an in-depth analysis and clearly understood the challenges in our domain. They brought some great knowledge/insights such as a cross-disciplinary approach that helped to improve our thinking about systems engineering and came with clear recommendation relevant to our real life projects which we could easily implement in a business-as-usual setting.”
Prof Ben Hicks said “Knowledge transfer activities such as these are two-way. We [the team] learn a huge amount from companies such as Malvern Panalytical who are leading in their field and continuously seeking improvements in their tools, methods, processes and practices. We look forward to continuing work with Malvern Panalytical and undertaking similar activities with our industrial partners/collaborators.”