AFIT workshops support digital transformation journey Published March 3, 2023 By By Katie Scott, Air Force Institute of Technology AFIT/LS WORKSHOP 0732: Current Topics Digital Acquisition and Digital Materiel Management. (Contributed photo) Photo Details / Download Hi-Res WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- The Air Force Institute of Technology’s School of Systems and Logistics is offering a Current Topics in Digital Acquisition and Digital Materiel Management Workshop (WKSP 0732). The workshop is designed to provide continuing and on-demand education to support the Department of the Air Force’s digital acquisition vision. The topics are targeted to personnel involved in new acquisitions, sustainment of systems or management of services. In 2022, the school conducted 24 offerings of the workshop on 15 different topic areas for 590 students. The webinars lasted from one to three hours depending on the topic. The most popular webinars were digital supply chain management, an overview awareness of digital acquisition and an introduction to user experience design. The workshop offered the school an opportunity to collaborate with AFIT’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. “I was pleased to be able to partner with the Department of Systems Engineering and Management in AFIT’s Graduate School for a few offerings and allow some of their recently graduated students to present their research work,” said Richard Sugarman, Systems and Software Engineering Management department head. Two graduates who presented a webinar were Capt. Brandon Koury and Capt. Christopher Reed. Koury graduated from AFIT in 2022 with a master’s degree in acquisition and program management. His presentation focused on his thesis research of performing a model-based literature review to develop a model-framework on user toolkits to demonstrate how one can use a model for market research and other product alternative analysis. Koury is now the Cloud One user experience program manager at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. Reed earned a master’s degree in systems engineering from AFIT’s Graduate School in 2022. He presented a workshop based his thesis research on the use of a parallel modeling effort of networked cooperative autonomous munitions that prioritize wide area search and multiple view target confirmations. Reed is currently a space flight mission engineer for the Air Force Research Laboratory. “These workshops provide another area for partnership between professional continuing education and graduate education and research,” said Lt. Col. Amy Cox, assistant professor of systems engineering and systems engineering program chair in the Graduate School of Engineering and Management. “While our students regularly publish and provide direct results to our research sponsors, their work does not usually make it directly to practitioners,” Cox said. “These workshops are a great way to get our research out; the hour-long webinar is accessible to many more people.” The next round of offerings are now available for registration. This series of workshops helps foster discussions on the next steps in a program's digital transformation journey. Topics include agile mindset and agile model-based systems engineering, using systems modeling language for requirements management, and reviews of current material on the Air Force digital guide website. For more information on the Current Topics in Digital Acquisition and Digital Materiel Management Workshop (WKSP 0732), please visit: https://www.afit.edu/LS/course.cfm?c=388. Students on the Air Force network can sign up for offerings using an online form at: https://forms.osi.apps.mil/r/UXuQfpZM64. Recordings of previous offerings and other content on digital life cycle management are on the shared learning experience platform Avolve at https://avolve.apps.dso.mil. A playlist of some AFIT content can be found at https://go.usa.gov/xJ8uA (log into Avolve first, then navigate to this URL).