System Engineering and Industrial Engineering

System Engineering and Industrial Engineering

The definition of Industrial engineering says that it is concerned with design, improvement and installation of systems of men, materials, machines, information, and energy.

Some industrial engineers describe themselves as system designers. Some industrial engineering programs have renamed themselves as industrial and systems engineering. Why such name change was required? Are industrial engineering and system engineering different. The issue is worthy of exploration.

I advocate that industrial engineering has two core areas of focus: human effort engineering and system efficiency engineering. Therefore, they have a specific role in design of systems of men, materials, machines, information, and energy. The profession included in its definition concern related to design, improvement and installation of systems of men, materials, machines, information, and energy. Can industrial engineers design systems internally in IE departments. They may not be able to design any complex system without the involvement of technical personnel belonging to the area of technology or management. But they can take the role of management of system design.

I came across the book, Systems Engineering Guidebook by James Martin published by CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, USA in 1996. This book is a description of a process framework for implementing the methods of engineering a system. This book describes the management of system design adequately to be a beginning point for exploring the subject. This book is also an outcome of the two internal editions of AT&T process document, which was prepared or chartered by the systems engineering process management team.

Definition of Systems Engineering

Systems Engineering (SE) basically consists of three elements:

 1. SE Management plans, organizes, controls and directs the technical development of a system or its products.

2. Requirements and Architecture Definition defines the technical requirements based on stakeholder requirements, defines a structure (or an architecture) for the system components, and allocates these requirements to the components of this architecture.

3. Development of Sub Systems

To support systems engineering process four types of teams are typically used.

1. SE Management Team

2. Requirements and Architecture Team

3. Development Team

4. System Integration and Verification Team

SE Management Sub process

Essential activities of this sub process are:

• Overall objectives of the system design, development and deployment program are defined.
• Management processes for various technical activities involved System DDD including methods and techniques for evaluation of effectiveness, risk, quality, and efficiency are specified.
• Project's progress will be tracked and managed.
• Risk management will be undertaken

Design, Production and Deployment Sub process

 Eight  primary functions are associated with system life cycle. They are development, production, test, deployment, operations, training, support, and disposition. The products in the system engineering process associated with operations are termed as end products and products associated with other phases are termed enabling products.

Deployment teams develop the deploymengt and disposition enabling products.

System management teams and other teams develop development enabling products.

Systems Integration and Verification Sub process

 Essential Elements

 System integration and verification plan is developed.

 Test and evaluation requirements are defined.

 Test activities are developed for each element.