Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary process that ensures that the customer's needs are satisfied throughout a system's entire life cycle. This process is comprised of the following seven tasks.1. State the problem. Stating the problem is the most important systems engineering task. It entails identifying customers, understanding customer needs, establishing the need for change, discovering requirements and defining system functions. 2. Investigate alternatives. Alternatives are investigated and evaluated based on performance, cost and risk. 3. Model the system. Running models clarifies requirements, reveals bottlenecks and fragmented activities, reduces cost and exposes duplication of efforts. 4. Integrate. Integration means designing interfaces and bringing system elements together so they work as a whole. This requires extensive communication and coordination. 5. Launch the system. Launching the system means running the system and producing outputs --making the system do what it was intended to do. 6. Assess performance. Performance is assessed using evaluation criteria, technical performance measures and measures --measurement is the key. If you cannot measure it, you cannot control it. If you cannot control it, you cannot improve it. 7. Re-evaluation. Re-evaluation should be a continual and iterative process with many parallel loops.This process can be summarized with the acronym SIMILAR (Bahill and Gissing, 1998).Source: http://www.sie.arizona.edu/sysengr/whatis/whatis.html -1 -This figure is from Bahill and Gissing (1998).The purpose of systems engineering is to produce systems that satisfy the customers' needs, increase the probability of system success, reduce risk and reduce total-life-cycle cost.Material for this paper was gathered from senior Systems Engineers at BAE Systems, Sandia National Laboratories, Hughes Missile Systems, Lockheed Martin Tactical Defense Systems, The Boeing Company, and Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratories, and also the following general references: Chapman, Bahill and Wymore (1992); Wymore (1993); IEEE P1220 (1994; Grady (1994Grady ( , 1995; Hughes Aircraft Company (1994); Martin-Marietta (1994); Shishko and Chamberlain (1995); Martin (1997); Blanchard and Fabrycky (1998); EIA-632 (1999); Sage and Rouse (1999); DSMC (1999); Buede (2000); Rechtin (2000) The system life cycleThe system life cycle has seven phases: (1) discovering system requirements, (2) investigating alternatives, (3) fullscale engineering design, (4) implementation, (5) integration and test, (6) operation, maintenance and evaluation and (7) retirement, disposal and replacement. However, the system life cycle is different for different industries, products and customers. Chapman, Bahill and Wymore (1992);Wymore (1993);Kerzner (1995); Shishko and Chamberlain (1995). State the problemThe problem statement starts with a description of the top-level function that the system must perform or the deficiency that must be ameliorated. It includes system requirements stated in terms ...
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Cost and schedule overruns are often caused by poor requirements that are produced by people who do not understand the requirements process.This paper provides a high-level overview of the requirements discovery process.
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