During the academic year 2006-2007, the Systems Realization Laboratory (SRL) - Savannah was founded by five faculty members (Farrokh Mistree, Janet Allen, Seung-Kyum Choi, Mervyn Fathianathan, and Dirk Schaefer). SRL-Savannah is currently focused on producing maximum impact as a group in the area of product creation, while aligning our individual research thrusts. The figure below shows how our individual research thrusts are aligned within the group setting. As a group, we are focused on four aspects of product creation: design methods, technologies, user and business processes.

 

 

Design methods for complex engineered systems: product families and architectures, the design and analysis of knowledge and information flows. Example research: investigations that result in simulation-based, distributed engineering of complex engineered systems.

Technology: Design, analysis, and fabrication aspects of products that employ ambient intelligence (are context aware, adaptive, and anticipatory); embedded sensors, sensor networks that facilitate automated reconfiguration; design of materials that embody and / or facilitate the creation of products that embody ambient intelligence.

Business: Rapidly reconfigurable business processes including supply and value chains and e-commerce. Example research: investigations that are embodied in network/graph theory and that result in reconfigurable, dynamic chains.

User: User observation methods and customer needs analysis relevant to product creation, development and testing. Example research: investigations that lead to symbiotic collaboration between humans and technology.