Risk Analysis of a Pinewood Derby:
A Case Study

Terry Bahill
Systems and Industrial Engineering
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721-0020, USA
terry@sie.arizona.edu
http://www.sie.arizona.edu/sysengr/slides/risk.ppt
© 2000-04 Bahill

Risk analysis is an important part of systems engineering. There are general guidelines for how it should be done, but there is no one correct way to do a risk analysis. This paper presents several risk analysis techniques and shows problems associated with them. By the end of the paper we think the reader will have seen enough examples of risk analyses to be able to do a risk analysis for a simple project.

This paper contains a simple case study that should be familiar. We think that most people will understand the derivation of our numbers and will relate to these every-day data. We hope that our readers can empathize with our problems and individual readers can actually implement some of our risk mitigation actions in their Cub Scout packs.

References [77]. This lecture is suitable for engineers. This talk requires an overhead projector (or PowerPoint and a computer projection system). This talk takes one hour.