BUILDING THE SYSTEMS ENGINEERING WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE
Building the Systems Engineering Workforce of the Future
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More and more industries recognize systems engineering as a critical skill to deal with the increasing complexity of today’s systems. However, the growing worldwide demand for highly skilled systems engineers in many application domains exceeds the available supply. Although there are a growing number of university graduate programs and professional training programs, most system engineers do not have a formal systems engineering education but learn “on the job”. This in turn limits the ability to establish minimum standards for educating systems engineers, and the ability for systems engineers to stay abreast of the latest advances in practices and technologies.
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An educational, training, mentoring, and life-long learning pipeline is in place to empower more system engineers with strong multi- and transdisciplinary competencies.
Systems thinking is embedded in early education.Basic systems engineering with strong technical and IT content is part of every engineer’s curriculum.
A wide range of education and training programs provide systems engineers the requisite systems engineering fundamentals, and help them continue to stay abreast of advances in practice and technologies. Professional certifications are normal, and career paths for systems engineers are well established within organizations.
Growing Need and Functional Differentiation for Future System Engineers
The growth of systems applications has led to a high demand for competent and well-trained system engineers. In part this is due to the trend of deep and narrow engineering specializations in “high- tech” organizations, leading to higher fragmentation of design work and hence the need for better systems integration.
The trends towards increasing automation and autonomy, ever more sophisticated digital ecosystems, rapidly changing technologies, and the need for cyber-secure and trusted systems have further fueled the need for more encompassing systems engineering competencies. Recognition is growing that a stronger differentiation and complement of domain and system competencies is needed.
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Communication and energy networks require engineers with a strong background in advanced electronics, control, operations, and communications engineering along with systems analysis expertise.
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Automated or autonomous systems, such as automobiles or harbor/airfield logistics require skills in IT, software, sensors, AI, ML, communication, cyber-security, safety, and social science skills.
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Medical or smart home devices, such as blood pressure or temperature measurement equipment need skills in sensor, IT, software and communication, and system analytics competencies.
These examples illustrate the need for well-educated and trained engineers with sound domain and system competencies.
What are the Implications for Education and Lifelong Learning by 2035?
SCHOOLS AND PRIMARY EDUCATION WILL BE CONTINUOUSLY ADAPTED
Systems thinking will be embedded in early education to complement learning in sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Early school education will develop team skills to create transdisciplinary solutions that respond to pre-defined problems and constraints.
Later school education will teach basic systems engineering concepts, such as: soliciting and understanding stakeholder needs, developing requirements, identifying, and evaluating conceptual alternatives before arriving at a solution. Such concepts will consider a broad range of perspectives while understanding and validating sources of data. Teaching and mentoring will be based on real-world experiences and case projects.
UNIVERSITIES ARE DESTINED FOR SUBSTANTIAL CHANGE
The digital transformation, new technologies, and virtual environments will substantially change demands for university engineering education. Interdisciplinary and technical competencies, as well as soft and durable personal and professional skills need to be offered to enable students to cope with new demands in a changing society. New generations of students “live their lives vastly digital”, and course delivery will continue to shift towards coursework being equally available in the classroom, virtually, and available for self study.
Systems engineering may diversify along specific needs by various stakeholders into different specialties, such as research systems engineering, systems integrator, or systems architect. Additionally, non-systems engineering programs (such as business programs) will increasingly include systems engineering courses, especially focused on systems thinking and systems analysis, helping make all decision makers systems thinkers.
Master, PhD, or post grad systems engineering education will include, next to sound scientific and technical skills, socio-technical, leadership, and entrepreneurship to enable engineers to cope with often non-deterministic complex systems that span a broad range of applications and involve a large industrial supply chain. Systems engineering curricula will expand to include socio-political and soft or durable skills. They will also feature broad digital modeling, simulation, virtualization, and tools skills, modern/agile processes, and methods and hence students will learn to shift from traditional “design-build-test” to “model-simulate-analyze-build” approaches.
ENTERPRISES WILL SUPPORT SYSTEMS ENGINEERING CAREERS
Continuous learning programs, prioritizing practical experiences, driven by employers will expand. This will enable a smooth transition from university education to industrial practice. Early to mid-career training and education by “internal universities”, will be focused upon company practices, and tailored to the systems, technologies and enterprise specific practices and standards used in the organization. Systems engineering certification programs will support validation and self-assessment of systems engineering competencies throughout an engineering career.
TRAINING PROVIDERS HAVE AN IMPORTANT ROLE
In view of the increasing needs for life-long learning, commercial systems engineering training providers will continue to grow and serve as “gap fillers” for teaching or deepening special subjects. Training houses with experienced system instructors, who have applied systems engineering to industry or real-life projects, and which can flexibly react to changing enterprise needs, new technological or methods developments, will continue to play a strong role for improving competencies and skills of the systems engineering community.