SYSTEMS ENGINEERING PROFILES
[ What is a Systems Engineering Profile ]
[ Contents of a Profile ]
[ Profile Topics ]
[ Project Deliverables ]
This document is a draft ... I will me making incremental modifications
until the end of October. I present it now so that you know what's ahead!
While the discipline of Systems Engineering has been practiced primarily
by the Defense, Aerospace, and some Civil sectors during the past 2-3 decades,
we expect that in the 21st Century,
nontraditional engineering (and even some non-engineering domains)
will benefit from systems engineering techniques.
All of these sectors will need to develop highly complex systems,
with strict requirements on performance, reliability, and economy.
A Systems Engineering Application Profile is a high-level
description of how Systems Engineering concepts, procedures,
processes, and technology can be used for problem solving
within an application domain.
By assembling and presenting a suite of applications profiles in one place,
we hope to identify patterns in problem solving strategies and techniques
that are common to multiple application domains (INCOSE 95).
Development of these profiles will advance systems engineering education,
promote the discipline of systems engineering,
and enable systems engineering practice across application domains.
Here is a list of suggested topic areas for constructing
a systems engineering profile:
Agriculture
Automated Highway Systems
Chemical Systems (e.g., oil/chemical refineries)
Commercial Aircraft
Electronic Design Automation
Electronic Packaging
Energy Systems
Environmental Restoration/Cleanup
Entertainment Systems (e.g., Networked Video Games)
Geographic Information Systems
Healthcare Information Systems
Highway Transportation Systems
Intelligent Building Systems
Intranets/Extranets/Web Browsers....
Infrastructure Systems (e.g., bridges, dams, roads etc..)
Medical devices
Microelectronics manufacturing
Motor Vehicles
Natural Resources Management
Office Automation
Petroleum Exploration
Power Systems Engineering
Robotic devices
Satellite Design and Deployment
Structural Systems (e.g., buildings and highway bridges)
Systems Engineering Automation/Tools.
Telecommunications
Telemedicine
Urban Planning
Waste Management and Disposal
Of course, you are welcome to propose your own topic.
Projects should focus on the solution of an applications problem
that requires the resources of 20-30 people. One example of an unacceptable
topic is "How I installed a web server in my Apartement."
Good introductions to some of these application domains can be
found in special issues of Scientific American,
Communications of the ACM and IEEE Design and Test.
Another good place to look is the Proceedings of the International
Council of Systems Engineering (INCOSE), especially papers that
have been presented in the "Systems Applications" tracks.
Each profile should contain:
INTRODUCTION
-
What is the purpose of the application domain?
-
What is the life-cycle of a typical product in the application domain?
-
How is a typical product in the application domain designed,
manufactured, distributed, maintained ..etc..?
-
How is the application domain/industry affected by
economic and commercial forces?
-
Are formal systems engineering processes used,
either explicitly or implicitly, within the domain?
If not, why not?
ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT
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Who are the main players (i.e., customers, developers, stakeholders)
in the application domain?
-
What are the strategic goals of a typical business operating in the domain?
-
How is a typical organization in the application domain/industry structured?
-
How do people within an organization interact with other organizations,
and with their customers and stakeholders?
-
To what extent are organizations horizontally and/or vertically integrated?
ASSESSMENT OF SYSTEMS INFORMATION
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What are some examples of domain requirements?
-
What standards are the important to the application domain/industry?
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How does the application domain partition its activities into
into individual functions and processes? In otherwords,
how do requirements flow down to individual processes and functions?
-
How are systems designed so that they are adaptable to
changes in technology, standards, and regulation?
Where appropriate, provide links to case-studies located on the web.
MEASURES OF EFFECTIVENESS
-
How is "productivity" measured within the application domain?
-
What factors influence the economics of product development,
choice of technology etc...
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How are issues of system "reliability" and "quality control" handled?
-
Is time-to-market a key factor in the success of the product?
Present one or two examples showing how these measures of effectiveness apply in practice.
OPTIMIZATION AND TRADE-OFF ANALYSIS
Detailed Analysis
Take a significant problem within your application area,
and formulate it in terms of a single- or multiobjective "optimization" problem.
-
What are the design variables?
Are they discrete or continuous?
-
How are requirements translated to optimization constraints?
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What are the key measures of effectiveness for the application domain?
-
How are design alternatives generated?
-
What are good ways to display and compare the
performance of the design alternatives?
-
How are system trade-offs made?
-
What are the limitations of the methodology you have adopted?
The important point at this stage is choosing a solution pathway
that is appropriate to the problem at hand.
I expect that some projects will lend themselves to the
solution of linear programming problems.
Others may lend themselves to analysis with decision
tables/tree and possibly the use of utility functions.
Both approaches are fine.
What I will be looking for is justification of the problem formulation,
and a critical assessment of the analysis that is conducted (both good and bad).
Use of Online Spreadsheets (Optional)
The purpose of this section will be to explore the use of Java Applets
for analysis of simple systems (and decision making)
within the application domain.
-
Develop a small set of example problems that illustrate how
systems analysis methods can be used for basic decision making
within the application domain.
-
How can Java bar chart, line charts, spreadsheets ... etc .. be used to
convey ideas?
-
Can you find applets on the web that could be customized to
the analysis of simple engineering/business systems?
If the library of Java Applets cannot portray a simply idea,
please let us know and we will consider writing a special applet
for your purpose.
SYSTEMS ENGINEERING CHALLENGES
-
What are the near- and long-term systems
challenges facing the industry/application domain?
-
What technologies could the application domain/industry benefit from --
for example, simulation, optimization, decision analysis,
generation of design alternative, and so forth.
CONTACTS AND REFERENCES
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Provide a list of contact addresses and references for your project.
-
Profiles should contain pointers to on-line case studies (if they exist).
To ensure that the previous sections are accurate, I expect that
you will contact and interview professionals working within the industry/domain.
Student groups may have 1 or two persons.
There will be two project deliverables:
-
Project Announcement.
I want to build a web page that briefly summarizes each project.
Each summary should contain: (1) the project title (with a link to
the project on the web), (2) the authors (with links to their
home pages) and (3) an abstract explaining the goals of the project.
-
Web-based Presentation.
Each group will be required to present their project on the web.
My original idea was that the entire project should be written in html.
However, this may be too ambitious for projects containing lots
of mathematical equations. Hence, I now propose a second option
where you present a 300-400 word executive summary of the
project on the web, and provide links to your report in a couple
of formats (e.g., postscript, PDF, MS Word).
-
Hand in a Final Project Report.
Hand in a hardcopy of your project. Projects are due 5pm, December 15.
Students enrolled in ENSE 625 may hand in their projects 5pm, December 17.
Note : These are hard deadlines. I'm leaving the country on December 22,
and if you don't get your project to me way before then, you won't
get a grade for the semester. This comment is particularly important for
students in ITV-land and NTU-land.
Assessment
Projects will be graded on:
-
A clear, concise, statement of the problem domain
being considered (longer is not necessarily better).
-
A strong connection between the nature of the problem domain
and the decision making/optimization problem that emerges.
-
A descriptive presentation of the systems analysis problem --
a picture that captures the effectiveness measures and limitations
of an ensemble of design alternatives may be worth a thousand words.
-
A critical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the
decision analysis procedure you have pursued.
REFERENCES
-
International Council of Systems Engineering Applications
Forum Working Group,
Systems Engineering Application Profiles, Version 1.0,
May 1, 1996.
Developed in October 1998 by Mark Austin
Last Modified November 19, 1998
Copyright © 1998, Mark Austin,
Institute for Systems Research,
University of Maryland