Implementing Lean Systems Engineering in the DNV Fuel Fighter project

This thesis is a practical application of Systems Engineering in a full-scale project. The author has participated as a member of NTNU's Eco-marathon team, who has spent the last two semesters designing and manufacturing an energy-efficient car for the Shell Eco-marathon competition 2012. The author made an assessment of the project to find the areas where he should focus his effort. The author also applied Lean Thinking to find the Systems Engineering methods that would best aid the team improve within the areas uncovered in the assessment. The areas where the team needed improvement were Knowledge management and Continuous improvements of the product development process. By using Model-based Systems Engineering processes the author produced a system model acting as a knowledge repository. Then, the author used methods from Lean Thinking for knowledge capture, namely Knowledge Briefs and learning events.For improving the product development process, the author introduced the team to Visual Workflow Management to help the team become more agile, and to visualize project progress from multiple perspectives in order to discover parts of the system which is not evolving at the desired rate.Key concepts in this thesis include:Lean Thinking, Lean Systems Engineering, Model-based Systems Engineering, Model-based Documentation, Knowledge management, Knowledge briefs, A3 method, system modelling, functional analysis, functional flow block diagrams (FFBDs), system architecture, Visual Workflow Management, Stand-up meetings, Visual project board, risk managemen