SMU to open engineering lab modeled after Skunk Works

FWST ^ | 10-18-08 | GENE TRAINOR

[Dysart]

DALLAS — Southern Methodist University will open an engineering laboratory that will be modeled after a Lockheed Martin research center considered among the most innovative in the world.

SMU’s Lockheed Martin Skunk Works Lab will open in December 2009 and will draw heavily from the management style forged by the defense contractor. Lockheed’s Skunk Works plant in Palmdale, Calif., develops the nation’s fastest, most versatile military jets and systems. Skunk Works also has offices in Fort Worth, where Lockheed builds fighter jets.

"Every groundbreaking technology that has produced an aircraft for the military has been thought about, tested and delivered by the Skunk Works," said Dianne Knippel, Skunk Works director of communication.

At SMU, teams of engineering students and faculty will work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to solve tough problems with tight deadlines, said Geoffrey Orsak, dean of SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. Projects can include developing new ways to build roads, bridges, housing developments, and clean-water and power systems, any problem where "people didn’t know how to solve them," he said. Throughout their research, "we will be getting support from all branches of Skunk Works," including advice or visits, he said.

The research developed could then be parlayed with business plans developed at SMU’s Cox School of Business to create companies and jobs, Orsak said. The curriculum could also be spun out to engineering schools nationwide.

[A_Former_Democrat]

Countdown to howls of protest from certain segments of SMU’s faculty . . . ten, nine, eight . . .

[Gaffer]

By designation, we will all be energetic, patriotic, tireless geniuses. No problem here. Just throw money at it.

There was a reason the Skunk Works worked.

[anymouse]

Typical liberal “Cargo Cult” mentality. They think that if they just “ape” a successful commercial management approach, that they will get the same results.

Here’s a hint SMU pointy heads, Kelley Johnson and his team had a clear objective and were highly motivated to do what they did. Fist thing out of the box, the SMU liberals list a bunch of PC “pie in the sky” projects with no clear motivation other than to keep getting funding. This dooms this like all the others that tried to copy cat Johnson’s Skunk Works including the current Lockheed Martin, who Johnson wouldn’t recognize.