ASSESS Insight Webinar

Make It – Easy

The Need for Strong Engineering Culture

Thursday 21 December 2023

In this exclusive 1-hour webinar, Gene Allen demonstrates how broad process understanding focused on organizational purpose is the first step in empowering organizations to be sustainable and resilient. Real progress then comes from using those processes to “Make It” - It being whatever product or process is the purpose of the business or organization. Gene relays how teams need to learn through practice to become proficient enough to “Make It” to sustain the organization and be able to respond to unexpected contingencies. He also discusses how information technology can be leveraged to make it easy for people to practice the processes required to “Make It.”

Gene’s lessons learned come from:

• Training nuclear navy engineering watch teams.
• Collaborating with aerospace and automotive companies to use computers to reduce design-manufacturing time.
• Working at MSC Software to develop and deploy the incorporation of variability into physics-based analysis to capture real world experience.
• Overseeing the development and deployment of the life cycle product development environment for ballistic missile submarines.

J​oin us for this fascinating insight into how a strong engineering culture can empower your organization.

A​bout the speaker

Gene Allen retired from the US Navy Civil Service in 2017 to pursue efforts to use emerging technologies to ensure broad availability of future economic opportunity. He has a specific focus on simulation-supported experiential learning to support workforce development. This is based on his experience establishing and managing collaborative R&D programs aimed at using computers to conduct better engineering since 1987. Programs such as the DARPA Initiative in Concurrent Engineering as Senator Byrd’s Economic Development and Defense Procurement Assistant, the NIST ATP co-funded Rapid Response Manufacturing Program as NCMS Director for Collaborative Development, and the DARPA co-funded Robust Design Computational System while with MSC Software. His book Collaborative R&D – Manufacturing’s New Tool, co-authored with Rick Jarman, captures the methods and processes used to establish and execute successful collaborative efforts. In 2008, Gene established the company Decision Incite to deploy stochastic simulation broadly and has since worked with MSC Software, IBM, Engineous, and Ontonix.

He returned to the Navy in 2009, establishing and leading a team to capture the ship design process while at NSWC Carderock. In 2013, he took a position with the Ohio Replacement/Columbia Class SSBN Acquisition Program at NAVSEA to coordinate life-cycle application of the program’s Integrated Product Development Environment.

Gene’s experience with workforce development is from training nuclear propulsion teams as the Reactor Training Assistant on USS ARKANSAS, CGN-41, after participating in construction, testing, and operations as a U.S. Naval officer. He has a degree in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and served as President of the MIT Club of Washington from 2018-2020. He co-owns a patent with Dr. Jacek Marczyk on using fuzzy cognitive maps to display Monte Carlo simulation results.