The challenge of acquiring a company and managing it successfully is the focus of this article. I have consolidated key learnings on ways to make the integration process more successful. This article covers my thoughts on what to look out for during integration, a timeline with specific recommended actions and ways to monitor progress. Following these guidelines will help you realize the goals and objectives that you wanted to achieve through this acquisition.

"We have a new strategy to grow our organization." Developing the plan is just the start. Implementing it in the organization is the real challenge. Many organizations don't fail due to lack of strategy; they struggle because it isn't effectively implemented. After working with hundreds of companies on strategy development, Denise and Robert have distilled the critical areas where organizations need to focus in order to enhance profitability through superior execution. If these questions are important to your organization, you'll find useful answers in the following articles: Do you find yourself overwhelmed by too many competing priorities? How do you limit how many strategic initiatives/projects your organization is working on at one time? How do you balance your resource requirements (time and money) with the availability of these resources? How do you balance your strategic initiative requirements with the day-to-day requirements of your organization?

If you communicate regularly, but still think that many on your team do not "get it," this article will give you the tools that will allow you to really gain traction and buy-in from your employees. Not only will you get some great ideas, but you will also get clear, specific steps for turning these ideas into reality. In other words, you will not only learn some new ways to think about your alignment, you will be able to act on your learning.

This paper contains lessons the author has gleaned from over 30 years of experience building optical systems. The author’s experience includes tactical lasers, laser damage measurements, space based astronomical observatories such as Chandra, James Webb Space Telescope as well as future technologies such as the starshade. These lessons cover engineering as art, discipline and profession. Each lesson is illustrated by an anecdote from the author’s career.

So what do you do when something has gone unexpectedly wrong with the process that you are monitoring or when your current state falls for short of desired state? Often the response is to call together the team, “huddle up”, brainstorm and come up with a solution pulled from “tribal knowledge”. There may also be some trial-and-error or one-factor-at-a-time experimentation to confirm conclusions. Truth be told that is all that is needed probably 80% of the time in many environments. What do you do however, when the event under study is complex and falls into that 20% bucket. In times like this taking the aforementioned unstructured approach would likely fail to discover the information needed or worse yet, may lead the team to draw a wrong conclusion. ? Now would be the time that a structured root cause analysis and corrective action process should be deployed. This paper will discuss three root cause analysis tools that can be used in situations of varying complexity. It will also discuss the corrective action process and pitfalls to avoid.

There is a range of lessons learned when taking an optical system from design through deployment in space. I will summarize some key lessons and observations related to both airborne and spaceborne optical systems with an emphasis on light weighted optics and space telescopes. Areas discussed encompass 1) the initial architecture and system trades as constrained by system error budgets, 2) manufacturing considerations, 3) testing implications, and 4) real and perceived cost impacts.

Mission objectives often have a level of imprecision that lends itself to a fuzzy logic approach, even though the more traditional approach is to flow down bimodal pass/fail “not to exceed” type of requirements. Examples will be given for large astronomical telescope applications involving optical performance, active wave front and control, and radiometric/stray light controls demonstrating the pros and cons of the two contrasting strategies. This paper provides an overview of lessons learned on different programs and how that information can be used reduce the cost, schedule, and success of future missions.

How might an optical design change in the final optics assembly couple with the spherical geometry required for beam delivery to the target chamber to cause the 40 cm beam to be rotated by more than several design teams had thought and not be discovered until the final design stage for the beam enclosure and structures?

This will address Lessons Learned on the approaches that worked or did not work over various programs when integrating and aligning elements into fairly complex optical systems. The appropriate planning can prevent many unnecessary headaches and achieve the desired optical performance while optimizing integration efficiency.

With the ongoing advancements in aspheric manufacturing and metrology, companies have to overcome processing challenges and from time to time learn costly lessons along the way. Optimax Systems, Inc., a leader in quick delivery prototype optics, has been manufacturing aspheric lenses for over 20 years. Along the way, we have learned many lessons, some the hard way. In this paper, I will share a few stories of how aspheres have humbled us, how we overcame the problem, and provide takeaways for other manufactures and designers.

This is a sad story about a polarization calibration error gone amuck. A simple laboratory mistake was mistaken for a new phenomena. Aggressive management did their job and sold the flawed idea very effectively and substantial funding followed. Questions were raised and a Government lab tried but couldn’t to recreate the breakthrough. The results were unpleasant and the field of infrared polarimetry developed a bad reputation for several years.

The paper delivers interesting short stories from about two decades of research and development in the field of surface inspection, hyper spectral imaging, high speed techniques. The paper covers problems with an import restricted SWIR sensor, which turned out to be creatively calibrated, the repeatedly ignored need for IR filters, the self-sustaining diffraction order, if you don’t understand it ... shoot it - visualization plans which ended up at the Shooting range, and the desire for substituting filament bulbs in colorimetry. From today’s point of view a set of trivialities, at their time thwarting factors of monstrous dimension, the problems discussed are squeezed into short chapters, which hopefully will be good for some fun without unnecessary lengthy elaboration. The presentation will contain exemplary footage and visualization.

The college lecture dates to the middle ages when only the instructor had access to written material. In the 21st century, the lecturing professor persists but often finds him/herself talking to bored or distracted students. In this paper, an instructor's transition from "covering material" to facilitating learning is described. A summary of research is also presented that affirms the efficacy of problem-based learning (PBL).