On the Unification of Systems Engineering

9.1.3 Development of a Framework of Research Topics in Systems Engineering

“…The contributors are listed in the acknowledgements section of this paper. This section groups the research issues received from these contributors and further issues identified by the author from published sources: Axelbrand (2006) Friedenthal (2006), Friedman (2006), Jackson (2006) and Vision 2020 (INCOSE 2006). The author emphasizes that these people contributed ideas, most of which appear in this paper, but that the author may have reworded some items and that the author bears responsibility for the form and content of the research vision document and this paper.…”

6.4.1 The Hitchins‐Kasser‐Massie (HKM) Framework for Systems Engineering

“…The rationale for these four requirements for the framework is explained below. (Hill and Warfield, 1972) anticipated (Friedman, 2006) writing "development of a theory of systems engineering that will be broadly accepted is much to be desired." Without such an understanding, systems engineers will continue to discuss rather than develop and apply systems engineering, and not move onwards to the creation of a discipline.…”

“…Systems engineering is performed in an organization with overlapping disciplines (Kasser, 1996;Friedman, 2006;Roe, 1995). Research into the origin of the disciplines found the following statement -"driven by cold war pressures to develop new military systems rapidly, operations research, systems engineering, and project management resulted from a growing recognition by scientists, engineers and managers that technological systems had grown too complex for traditional methods of management and development" (Johnson, 1997).…”

“…This has created a large degree of overlap of activities. These boundaries are artificial and often detrimental (Friedman, 2006). • The evolution and overlap is continuing.…”

“…

George Friedman (Friedman, 2006) called for the development of a grand unified theory of systems engineering (GUTSE) echoing (Hill and Warfield, 1972) 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.This paper focuses on what systems engineers do, and builds on past research and success.

…”