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)

Functional Architecture

Functional architecture is architecture that's independent of the technical implementation of the system, which is more stable across product families and generations to derive a sustainable physical architecture.

Functional architecture is defined as "Architecture based on functional elements, functional interfaces, and architecture decisions." (Tim Weilkiens, Jesko G. Lamm, Stephan Roth, Markus Walker. Model-Based System Architecture. Wiley. 2015).

Technology changes, but the domain-related functions are stable. For example, the high-level functions to play music are the same for a record player as for a music streaming service. None of the leading music streaming providers are among the leading record player companies from the past. First, you should focus on providing excellent services to your customers, and then you focus on the technologies that implement the functions.

At first glance, it seems trivial to describe functions independently of technologies...