Systems Engineering

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. Issues such as logistics, the coordination of different teams, and automatic control of machinery become more difficult when dealing with large, complex projects. Systems engineering deals with work-processes and tools to handle such projects, and it overlaps with both technical and human-centered disciplines such as control engineering, industrial engineering, organizational studies, and project management.

The GVCS qualifies as a "complex engineering project", and can therefore benefit from applying this engineering discipline/specialty.

Definitions

These are technical engineering definitions, which are not the same as general common use of the same words.

Architecture - Fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its environment embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution.

Concern - Interest in a system relevant to one or more of its stakeholders. It pertains to any influence on a system in its environment including: developmental, technological, business, operational, organizational, political, economic, legal, regulatory, ecological, and social influences.

Environment - Context determining the setting and circumstances of all influences upon a system from outside the defined system boundary.

System - The combination of elements that function together to produce the capability to meet a need, but which do not do so as separate elements. The elements include all hardware, software, equipment, facilities, personnel, policies, processes, documents, and procedures needed for this purpose. A system as a whole exhibits qualities, properties, characteristics, functions, behavior, and performance. The value added by a system as a whole, beyond that contributed by its elements, is created by the relationship of its parts, in other words how they are interconnected.

Systems Engineering Tools

• Input/Output Model - This can be visualized as a spreadsheet with various machines in the GVCS as columns, and inputs and outputs as rows. Each machine requires inputs such as steel, lubricants, assembly labor, fuel, etc. It also produces some kind of output. The purpose of a model is to see if your system as a whole has closure and balance. In other words, are all the inputs matched by outputs? Are there missing machine types identified by missing inputs? Is the size or quantity of a particular machine in the kit the correct size/productivity? Will the system as a whole produce a surplus, and if so how much? These are really all questions of accounting. Rather than counting everything in money, this type of spreadsheet does the accounting of each type of input/output/resource/supply separately as categories. Note that human labor for assembly, maintenance, and operation is one of the input types.