A Theory for System Engineering Management

1993

When applied to a system, the doctrine of successive refinement is a divide-and-conquer strategy. Complex systems are sucessively divided into pieces that are less complex, until they are simple enough to be conquered. This decomposition results in several structures for describing the product system and the producing system. These structures play important roles in systems engineering and project management. Many of the remaining sections in this chapter are devoted to describing some of these key structures. Structures that describe the product system include, but are not limited to, the requirements tree, system architecture and certain symbolic information such as system drawings, schematics, and data bases. The structures that describe the producing system include the project's work breakdown, schedules, cost accounts and organization.

INCOSE International Symposium, 2018

Systems engineering is widely perceived as an empirical discipline, with a need for theoretical foundations that can facilitate reasoning about practice. This is an attempt to help build such foundations by systems-theoretic inquiry into the nature of the relationship between knowledge and engineering. We conceptualize this relationship in terms of four worlds: the real world, the world of systems models, a world of aspect knowledge, and a world of wholes knowledge: knowledge that indicates how aspects come together and also how wholes relate to each other. This leads us to a generative understanding of systems engineering: synthesizing aspects to develop blocks; and generating the network of blocks that form a system, through recursive performance of three activities: decomposition, dependency closure and refinement. The problem of systems engineering practice involves augmenting this core with the concerns of problem formulation, design of the supporting ecosystem, and the need for closing gaps between the model world and real world. We derive some initial confidence in the validity and value of this strawman model by examining its ability to explain some aspects of current systems engineering practice, and the insights it provides into how we can integrate system modeling across knowledge domains. Introduction: Objectives and Motivation System engineering applies to various domains, enterprise application domains such as banking and insurance, and engineering domains such as infrastructure and operations. Systems engineering as a discipline is responsible for bringing multiple such domains together into a unified system that addresses a set of objectives. A central issue in systems engineering, therefore, is how knowledge from various domains come together to generate a system. Over time, engineering has developed a fabric of concepts about the nature of systems. This includes the notion of blocks (modules, components, subsystems, systems) with structures (entities with attributes, relationships among them, and operations that can be performed on them), and processes (sequences of operations) enabled by these structures that produce behavior. It also includes the notion of block composition, and associated concepts such as interfaces, dependencies, and interactions between blocks and their context. This is a general fabric of concepts that applies to all systems, thereby enabling the discipline of systems engineering, and an associated body of practice knowledge about how to engineer systems that have desired characteristics. Systems theory and systems science have delved deeper into the nature and behavior of systems, leading to concepts such as variety, dynamics and emergence, and bodies of knowledge about the nature and types of systems, relationships between structure, processes and behavior, and the behavior of networks of processes. We also have bodies of knowledge in scientific domains, enterprise (human endeavor) domains such as telecom and medicine, technology domains such as power electronics and scripting languages, and aspect domains such as security, chemistry and performance that focus on particular kinds of system characteristics and properties.

2007

George Friedman called for the development of a grand unified theory of systems engineering (GUTSE) echoing who wrote -development of a theory of systems engineering that will be broadly accepted is much to be desired.‖ Taking up the spirit of the challenge, this paper applies systems thinking to systems engineering to propose a framework that can serve as a vital element in formalizing the discipline of systems engineering and potentially as a platform for developing such a theory.

2008

organize architecture descriptions and information as perceived by their users. We have chosen to extend and modify the Zachman Framework (ZF) (Zachman, 1987) because it provides various artifacts needed to describe an information system as viewed by different stakeholder's perspectives of the system. Through the modification and extension of the Zachman Framework, an SoS engineering methodology emerges that enables the management of constituent systems and the SoS that is functionally dependent upon the SoS attributes. Systems and System of Systems There are numerous definitions of a system. INCOSE defines a system as an integrated set of elements that accomplishes a defined objective. These elements include products (hardware, software, and firmware), processes, people, information, techniques, facilities, services, and other support elements (INCOSE, 2006). Buede defines a system as "a set of components (subsystems, segments) acting together to achieve a set of common objectives via the accomplishment of a set of tasks" (Buede, 2000). For the purposes of this article, we will consider a system as something that has the ability to perform a set of tasks to satisfy a mission or objective. For example, an automobile can move a person from one location to another and is a system. The motor with the automobile cannot perform a goal by itself. Removed from the automobile and placed on the ground, it does nothing until it is combined with other parts of a system, e.g. a fuel delivery element, can it work in concert with those other parts to perform the goal of moving an individual to another location. This is not to minimize the complexity or importance of the motor. It is simply a subsystem of a broader system. The same holds true for the fuel delivery subsystem. It is an important part of the automobile, but is a subsystem in the automobile. There are numerous definitions of SoS. INCOSE defines an SoS as "a system-of-interest whose system elements are themselves systems; typically these entail large scale inter-disciplinary problems with multiple, heterogeneous, distributed systems" (INCOSE, 2006). The various definitions of systems do not provide a detailed enough taxonomy to provide differentiation resulting in a dual perspective of a system-of-interest is my element versus your system. This perception extends to your system is my SoS, resulting in sufficient discussion on differentiating elements and systems (Simon, 1962; Koestler, 1967; Boardman, 1995; Simon, 1996). Koestler (1967) managed this perceptual challenge with the introduction of holons-nodes on a hierarchic tree that behave partly as systems, or as elements, depending on how the observer perceives them. In this model there are intermediary forms of a series of levels in an ascending order of complexity. These levels are considered subsystems that have characteristics of the system Processing Note.

1994

IEEE Africon '11, 2011

A theory for describing the systems engineering process using formal mathematical structures is presented in this paper. This abstraction of the systems engineering process makes it possible to concentrate on the operations and structures involved in the process without the distraction of the narrative word. An important aspect in the formulation of this theory is the inclusion of people as part of it. Further development of the theory will lead to the implementation of the mathematical description in simulation software to study the dynamic characteristics of and interaction of people with the systems engineering process as well as systematically validating the theory through empirical studies.

INCOSE International Symposium, 2004

Organizations may have sophisticated and detailed systems engineering process models yet struggle to implement them effectively in the face of conflicting internal priorities, legacy practices and slowly changing cultures. Taking experiences from a number of sources this paper identifies a range of current systems engineering issues and suggests that it is the interface of systems engineering with other business activities that is a cause of many implementation problems. By taking a systems view of the business (a systems-make-systems approach), one can use systems engineering principles to address these problems. A broader remit for Systems Engineering Management is recommended.

Systems engineering is presently demonstrating the characteristics of being in the emerging stages of a discipline. A discipline generally matures when an overriding axiom is presented and accepted by the majority of practitioners. This paper presents one such high level underpinning axiom for systems engineering that has the potential to unite the disparate camps within systems engineering and enable the practice of systems engineering in all application domains to achieve successes similar to those it achieved in the National Aeronautical and Aerospace (NASA) environment in the 1960's and 1970's. The axiom does this by focusing on the solution system rather than on systems engineering. tems engineering" 2. In this paradigm requirements are one of the inputs to the 'systems engineering process', see (Martin, 1997) page 95; page 60; DOD 5000.2-R, 2002), pages 83-84) for typical examples.

El Nautilus presenta un caparazón tabicado internamente lo que le facilita la flotabilidad y los desplazamientos en el agua. Es el único sobreviviente de un grupo de cefalópodos muy extendido en el pasado.

Educación Rural en Colombia, 2019

Para nadie es un secreto que el nivel de la educación en Colombia es muy bajo, tanto en la educación básica como en la educación superior. En este articulo tendrá nuestro foco de atención la educación rural que a hoy en día presenta un nivel aún más bajo de calidad...