Systems engineering in an age of complexity

Abstract

This paper considers the creation of Complex Engineered Systems (CESs) and the Systems Engineering approach by which they are designed. The changing nature of the challenges facing Systems Engineering is discussed, with particular focus on the increasing complexity of modern systems. It is argued that modern complexity poses a major challenge to our ability to achieve successful systems and that this complexity must be understood, predicted and measured if we are to engineer systems confidently. We acknowledge previous work which concluded that, in complex systems, failures ("accidents") may be inevitable and unavoidable. To further explore potential tools for increasing our confidence in complex systems, we review research in the field of Complexity Theory to seek potentially useful approaches and measures and find ourselves particularly interested in the potential usefulness of relationships between the magnitudes of events and their frequency of occurrence. Complexity Theory is found to have characterized naturally occurring systems and to potentially be the source of profitable application to the systems engineering challenge, viz., the creation of complex engineered systems. We are left with the tentative conclusion that truly complex systems, with our present understanding of complex behavior, cannot be designed with a degree of confidence that is acceptable given our current expectations. We recommend that the discipline of systems engineering must investigate this issue as a matter of priority and urgency and seek to develop approaches to respond to the challenge.

A Theory of Information Quality and its Implementation in Systems Engineering

“…It is well known that the cost to extract defects early can be orders of magnitude less than later in the program [2], [6]. Systems engineers and program managers need new methods to improve the outcomes of complex system development programs [25], [26], and requirements engineering has been identified as one of the most important areas in need of improvement [13], [14], [16]- [18].…”

A Framework for Predicting Future System Performance in Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles

“…The theoretical basis of the first measure is the observation that the complexity of the environment is a measure of the resistance a system encounters where it operates. Equation (14) represents this complexity ratio, C ratio , which is the ratio of the distance travelled to the Euclidian distance between a start and end point. If one were to travel in a straight line with no deviation in the path, then C ratio would equal 1.0, indicating no resistance…”

“…In (14), the numerator is the sum of the Euclidian distance between all adjacent nodes, which are the centroids of the cells from the discretization of the traversal cost map, along the path, (x n , y n ) and (x n−1 , y n−1 ), and the denominator is the Euclidian distance between the starting waypoint, (x 0 , y 0 ), and the goal waypoint, (x k , y k ).…”

“…Consequently, systems engineers as a whole must investigate this issue as a matter of priority and urgency, and develop approaches to respond to the challenge [14]. In response, we have taken a systems engineering approach to create a tool that can predict system performance (as part of the system TEV&V process) and serve as a framework for testing.…”

Design of a web-based thesaurus for Systems of Systems Engineering

“…Activities within Systems Engineering (SE) lack sufficient breadth to address Systems of Systems (SoS) domains as a holistic system [1]. An emerging discipline, the aim of SoS Engineering (SoSE) is to help with the design and management of SoS particularly complex SoS.…”