Upcoming Membership Meeting: The Art of Integration

Meeting Information

Speaker: Chin-An Cheng

Date: May 12, 2014

Time: 5:30pm to 8:00pm

Location: Room 109/110 (Room location has been updated), Carnegie Mellon University, Silicon Valley Campus (CMU), Moffett Field, CA

Summary

Integration is important to systems engineering because most systems fail at the interface that is an integral part of integration.  Integration is intuitive to human and other social animals and yet, most systems engineers do not think much about it.  Integration can be very complex and complicated, it takes many shapes and flavors and yet the essential elements of the integration are the same – relationships between system elements and rules that govern those relationships.  The art of integration is to define and manage the relationships and form a strong bond between various subsystems.  At the end of the presentation, an example of successful system integration will be discussed to illustrate the art of integration.

Speaker Bio

Chin-An Cheng was born in Shanghai, raised in Taiwan, and educated in the United States. He has 38 years experience in both aerospace and commercial companies including Northrop Aircraft Company, Garrett Airesearch Corporation, Western Union, Hughes Aircraft Company, C.A. Devices, Space Vector Corporation, AXA Corporation, and Western Medical Equipment. He recently retired from the position of Staff Control Engineer at Lockheed Martin. 

Mr Cheng has worked on a large variety of systems including: F-5 fighter jets, Boeing 747s, various turbo-machines, TDRSS Satellites, laser weapons and designators, night vision technology, tanks, space sensors, missiles, communication satellites, computer animation and medical equipment. 

Mr. Cheng received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley, and an MSME and EME from the University of Southern California.