This webinar presents a surrogate model approach to advance fundamental research on understanding impacts of
engineering decision-making on complex system performance and system development cycle times. The approach is
motivated by digital transformation and advancement of the digital engineering strategy by the U.S. Department of
Defense as part of acquisition modernization. The digital engineering strategy focuses on five goals as a means to
reduce acquisition cycle times and increase capability deployment to the warfighter, but we lack the theory to
understand the impact of the digital transformation on engineering processes, decision- making and the solution
performance. The surrogate model approach discussed herein could provide a methodology for studying the impact of
digital engineering on solution performance and lifecycle development time on a wide class of design problems with
tunable complexity.