Book Image

The New Engineering Game

By : Tim Weilkiens
Book Image

The New Engineering Game

By: Tim Weilkiens

Overview of this book

Organizations today face an increasingly complex and dynamic environment, whatever their market. This change requires new systems that are built on the foundation of a new kind of engineering and thinking. The New Engineering Game closes the gap between high-level reflections about digitalization and daily engineering methods and tools. The book begins by describing the first three industrial revolutions and their consequences, and by predicting the fourth industrial revolution. Considering the fourth industrial revolution, it explains the need for a new kind of engineering. The later chapters of the book provide valuable principles, patterns, methods, and tools that engineering organizations can learn and use to succeed on the playfield of digitalization. By the end of the book, you’ll have all the information you need to understand the various concepts to take your first steps towards the world of digitalization.
Table of Contents (5 chapters)

Complexity and Dynamics

Many times in this book, I mention the challenges of complexity and dynamics. The Oxford dictionary defines complexity as:

A group or system of different things that are linked in a close or complicated way (Oxford Dictionary Online, www.oxforddictionaries.com, accessed 2017).

In the following, I describe my understanding of these terms. I provide two definitions of the term complex that cover two different aspects: an internal view of the characteristics of a complex entity, and an external view of how an observer regards a complex entity.

Definition of complexity [internal view]: A characteristic of a complex entity is a large number of different elements and different kinds of relationships between the elements.

The other definition specifies complexity from an external viewpoint:

Definition of complexity [external view]: The complexity of an entity is a measure of the number of surprises from the perspective of an observer of the entity.

In any case, it is hard to...