Systems Engineering

Systems engineering begins with systems thinking. This is a method for understanding the complexity of a system by viewing it as a whole, rather than breaking it down into its individual parts and studying them.

The iceberg model shown in the image on the right is a simple example of systems thinking as applied to our environment as a complex system. Donella Meadows proposed it. The tip of the iceberg is what we perceive—heavy rain, heat waves, etc.—that is, the things to which we react hectically and often haphazardly. If we take the time to recognize the patterns in such events, we can make predictions to a certain extent. If we succeed in understanding the relationships between the objects involved, we have a good chance of identifying the causes behind the patterns of events—that is, formally describing the structural relationships between the objects and ultimately creating models that enable us to simulate the events and their influencing factors using a wide variety of parameter variations. Result: Reality is translated into a mathematical model. Such models enable us to understand the real-life options before they occur—that is, to understand complex systems—so that we can ultimately manage their opportunities and threats.

Transferring this concept to the development of a technical system—by which we mean something a client might want to procure from a supplier—the focus is no longer on the system to be delivered in isolation, but rather on the system within which the delivered system is intended to perform its function: the so-called environment system. Within the environment system, the system to be delivered is one of many interacting objects. Systems engineering is the method to identify all these objects and relationships; model-based systems engineering is the method to fully apply systems thinking to the technical world by transferring the objects of the environment—and later, the subsystems of the deliverable—as well as the mathematically formulated relationships between them into models. With the help of these models, we can anticipate the target deliverable, its functional reality, and all the opportunities and threats associated with it—front-loading at its finest.