Exploring the Role of Design in Systems Engineering

Abstract

The paper explores the role of design in systems engineering. It reviews the treatment of design in systems engineering in general and in the Systems Engineering Handbook in particular, and concludes that design is the missing dimension in systems engineering. It provides a review of salient viewpoints from research in design that can enhance the understanding of the design dimension in system engineering.complex problems and discusses how these theories might be incorporated into the handbook and other systems engineering guidance. Design-Related Concepts in Systems EngineeringSystems engineering practitioners and scholars chose different terms that cover overlapping concepts based on their background and perception. This is especially true for design-related vocabulary. This section discusses the more common terms related to design: systems engineering, systems analysis, systems architecting, and systems design.Systems Engineering (SE): Brill (1994) described the long debate on the definition of systems engineering as a "semantics jungle." One problem is that systems engineering has both a 'systematic ' and 'systemic' nature (Chestnut 1967). The systematic nature of systems engineering focuses on management processes, and the systemic nature focuses on design methods.Stupples (2006) believes that the systematic nature of systems engineering is the current face of the discipline. He states, "SE has sadly lost its science foundation and is being practiced widely as the application of management processes to systems design and hence information required for decision making under uncertainty is not being generated." Comparing earlier definitions of systems engineering with recent ones supports Stupples' assertion. One of the earlier definitions (Chase 1974) states that SE is "the process of selecting and synthesizing the application of the appropriate scientific and technical knowledge to translate system requirements into system design and subsequently to produce the composite of equipment, skills, and techniques that can be effectively employed as a coherent whole to achieve some stated goal or purpose." Here, as Rhodes and Hastings (2004) pointed out, the emphasis was on the translation of requirements for the design process.The coordinative and managerial view to SE has emerged in the past two decades as can be seen in two definitions of SE. First, INCOSE (Haskins 2011) defined SE as "an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems. It focuses on defining customer needs and required functionality early in the development cycle, documenting requirements, and then proceeding with design synthesis and system validation while considering the complete problem: operations, cost and schedule, performance, training and support, test, manufacturing, and disposal. SE considers both the business and the technical needs of all customers with the goal of providing a quality product that meets the user needs." The intent of INCOSE definition may have been to capture the full context wi...

Framework for Problem Definition – A Joint Method of Design Thinking and Systems Thinking

“…Design thinking approach is expected to work effectively in these why and what domains. In Shafaat's survey (Shafaat 2015), he found out that the synergy effect of jointly applying design thinking and systems thinking can be positive on the system performance.…”

“…The importance of design aspect in systems engineering has been discussed and many researchers have introduced their theories focused on design thinking. In 2015, Ali Shafaat in Padue University states in (Shafaat 2015) that design has a significant role in systems engineering and suggests that there is a need for more explicit and focused coverage of design in INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook (Haskin 2011). In the same year, Zhao in Norwegian Institute of Systems Engineering introduced his research in testifying the hypotheses "design thinking and systems thinking can be jointly applied in an innovative system development"; "their synergy effect can be positive on the system performance" based on the survey results by engineers in organizations (Zhao 2015).…”

“…Applying design thinking approach is considered effective in the phase of defining problems and stakeholder requirements. Typical systems engineering problem definitions have many degrees of freedom in the initial state (Shafaat 2015). The requirements given in the beginning are never complete nor clear.…”

Model‐based design of project systems, modes, and states

“…System theories such as system control have influenced project management to the point that Kapsali has called project management a system brainchild. Gidado and Baccarini investigated the role of system complexity in project planning, performance, and control, and Shafaat and Kenley and Frenken proposed that project systems designers must cope with exogenous and endogenous complexity that relates to the system's architecture. More recently, other fields of system science such as fractals, chaos theory, systems engineering, and cybernetics have been investigated, and the findings show that cybernetics provides a basis for effective project analysis and that systems engineering can be applied to manage project and product developments.…”

Applying Design Thinking in Systems Engineering Process as an Extended Version of DIKW Model

“…and "what kind of information should be gathered to form what kind of knowledge?" There is a discussion that design thinking is effectively applied in the DIKW model (Shafaat et al, 2015), but there is no discussion about how it should be applied. In other words, no specific method has been proposed for turning information into corresponding knowledge in "unknown contexts".…”