SYSTEMS ENGINEERING CHALLENGES

APPLICATIONS

1. Systems engineering contributes innovative solutions to major societal challenges.

This challenge demonstrates how systems engineering is applied to address some of the Grand Engineering Challenges related to climate change, managing our natural resources, societal infrastructure, security, and space exploration. This also includes applications to support policy development that address complex geo-political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal (PESTEL) considerations.

APPLICATIONS

2. Systems engineering demonstrates value for projects and enterprises of all scales, and applies across an increasing number of domains.

Applying systems engineering principles and practices can provide significant value to small, medium, and large enterprises, particularly as the systems these enterprises develop, operate, and support become more complex. Enterprises must leverage the broad systems engineering body of knowledge and lessons learned to achieve this value and share this knowledge within and across enterprises to mature and advance the practice of systems engineering.

PRACTICES

3. Systems engineering anticipates and effectively responds to an increasingly dynamic and uncertain environment.

The factors that influence system development are complex and continuously changing. These factors include stakeholder expectations, the regulatory environment, technology advances, and global disruption. At the same time, competitive forces demand that the cycle time to develop and incrementally evolve systems continues to decrease. The application of systems engineering must anticipate changes that impact the development and adapt to them.

PRACTICES

4. Model-based systems engineering, integrated with simulation, multi-disciplinary analysis, and immersive visualization environments is standard practice.

A digital representation of a system is at the heart of a model-based systems engineering approach. This approach leverages automation and computation to support simulation of the system dynamic behavior, multi-disciplinary analysis, visualization, and management of the system design across its lifecycle. The digital representation enables a shared understanding of the system among its stakeholders.

PRACTICES

5. Systems engineering provides the analytic framework to define, realize, and sustain increasingly complex systems.

Systems, such as vehicles, are continuing to increase in complexity as they become more interconnected and more autonomous. They embed advanced sensors, processing, storage, and other technologies. At the same time, they must interact with humans, and must be safe, trust worthy, and resilient. The systems engineering practice must include a framework to analyze complex system behavior under adverse conditions, and ensure the system performs within acceptable bounds.

PRACTICES

6. Systems engineering has widely adopted reuse practices such as product-line engineering, patterns, and composable design practices.

Enterprises make substantial investments in developing systems, subsystem, and components, which includes the investment in the product and the engineering knowledge. This investment can best be leveraged by capturing and embedding this knowledge in reusable practices, such as product-line development, design patterns, and composable design. These practices not only reduce cost, but also enable the ability to rapidly configure systems to reduce cycle time.

TOOLS & ENVIRONMENTS

7. Systems engineering tools and environments enable seamless, trusted collaboration and interactions as part of the digital ecosystem.

The systems engineering tools and environments are part of a digital ecosystem. This ecosystem must share the system lifecycle data across globally distributed teams that include customers, contractors, and suppliers. The data must be efficiently managed, and access must be controlled and protected.

RESEARCH

8. Systems engineering practices are based on accepted theoretical foundations and taught as part of the systems engineering curriculum.

Systems engineering must balance a wide array of concerns associated with increasing complex systems. The complexity reflects the increase in system and component interactions, and increases in functionality, performance, trust, resilience, and other lifecycle concerns such as sustainability. Dealing with this level of complexity can no longer be based on grey beard knowledge alone, but must be based on a sound theoretical foundation. In addition, the systems engineering practices must be adapted to different application domains with varying system and organizational complexities, varying levels of risk, and different enterprise and project constraints. The foundations also provide the basis for selecting the right practices for the application. In order for the practice of systems engineering to mature and advance, these foundations must be defined, and consistently taught, learned, and applied.

COMPETENCIES

9. Systems engineering education is part of the standard engineering curriculum, and is supported by a continuous learning environment.

The increasing complexity of systems requires a workforce that can apply the systems engineering practices, and provide the value to the system stakeholders. The practices will continue to evolve as systems and enterprises continue to evolve. As a result, systems engineering education is a continuous learning process. Furthermore, systems engineering is not just performed by the ‘systems engineer’, but is practiced by all engineers and others disciplines who contribute to the design and development of a system. This requires that systems engineering fundamentals be taught as part of engineering education, and systems thinking be introduced even more broadly.