Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/304887
S SYSTEMS INTEGRATION www.vanguardcanada.com APRIL/MAY 2014 19 the same sectors as you, doing different things, and you'd be shocked by how differently they might see something. I never learn more than when I talk with someone who is looking at a problem through a different lens than I am. It causes me to rethink. All of a sudden whole new ways of operating or of solving the problem emerge. That's one of the things I love most about the EDGE, the chance to get into collaborative dialogue with people who think differently. Q Does it help you get a sense of emerging technology for future systems before it's widely recognized? Absolutely. One of the tools we have is a call for innovations to ex- plore a problem. For example, 18 months ago we wanted to look at what was going on in the world of power sources. For a sol- dier operating in remote or isolated areas, power is life or death. We wanted to understand how batteries have changed in the past few years, who is working on clothing that generates or collects energy, solar units embedded in clothing, etc. The EDGE is a powerful environment that lets us get inside some of these areas. Q Are there specifi c technology trends you are following? Size, weight and power are always an issue. But an emerging trend that I see as huge is recognizing that we are moving toward com- monality and COTS (commercial off the shelf) technology – may- be we call it "COTSifi cation." That is a good thing and poten- tially a risk. If you don't really understand the system of systems characteristics, COTS parts can cause no end of problems because they are not necessarily built to be part of a SoS. The other thing that I think we really need to observe closely is the way in which this next generation interacts with technology…that leans back on our earlier topic on the future of training. In GD, we use a human-centred design approach, which causes us to embed that kind of thinking in the design. As with security, we don't stick the human in at the end. GD and the defence com- panies that we work with have a clear understanding of the end user and what they want to do. If you ever get disconnected from deeply understanding how they want to operate, you run the risk of building a system of systems that is not useful to them. So it's never far from our thinking. We're lucky: the end users we operate with relish that interaction. Q Last thoughts? One last thought that might explain what SoS is all about. Future intent drives near-term actions, whether they are goal achieving or tension relieving. What I mean is that if you have the future intent of still supporting that customer 50 years from now, that would drive your near-term actions today. And is your near-term action about achieving a goal or just relieving some tension you have right now? That is part of what the system of systems problem needs: people who are goal-achieving and are carrying out near- term actions that have a future intent. It is interesting how much it is a people problem, despite the technology in every project. Success and failure in companies and organizations is about getting people aligned around some com- mon objectives and shared vision. WHEN CANADA'S MILITARY NEEDS TO IMPROVE SOLDIER SAFETY, THEY COME TO LONDON, ONTARIO. KONGSBERG PROTECH SYSTEMS Jørn Buø, President, Kongsberg Protech Systems Canada Kongsberg Protech Systems Canada is a world leader in remote weapon systems manufacturing focused on militar y protection and sur vivability. "In London, we have access to highly trained people with strong expertise in the defence sector," Jørn Buø, President. D I S C O V E R T H E A D V A N T A G E S O F L O C A T I N G I N L O N D O N , O N T A R I O W W W . L E D C . C O M LEDC_Vanguard-kongsberg_FA_02.indd 3 2014-03-31 6:04 PM