Book Image

Systems Engineering Demystified

By : Jon Holt
Book Image

Systems Engineering Demystified

By: Jon Holt

Overview of this book

Systems engineering helps us to understand, specify, and develop complex systems, and is applied across a wide set of disciplines. As systems and their associated problems become increasingly complex in this evermore connected world, the need for more rigorous, demonstrable, and repeatable techniques also increases. Written by Professor Jon Holt – an internationally recognized systems engineering expert – this book provides a blend of technical and business aspects you need to understand in order to develop successful systems. You'll start with systems engineering basics and understand the complexity, communication, and different stakeholders' views of the system. The book then covers essential aspects of model-based systems engineering, systems, life cycles, and processes, along with techniques to develop systems. Moving on, you'll explore system models and visualization techniques, focusing on the SysML, and discover how solutions can be defined by developing effective system design, verification, and validation techniques. The book concludes by taking you through key management processes and systems engineering best practices and guidelines. By the end of this systems engineering book, you'll be able to confidently apply modern model-based systems engineering techniques to your own systems and projects.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to Systems Engineering
4
Section 2: Systems Engineering Concepts
8
Section 3: Systems Engineering Techniques
14
Section 4: Next steps

Summary

In this chapter, the concept of a system and its interfaces was explored in more detail.

The different concepts associated with a system, such as the levels of abstraction and the interactions between these levels and the presence of stakeholders, were defined on the ontology. Where interaction between different elements occurs, it is possible to identify an interface.

interfaces were defined in terms of their different types, either service-based or flow-based, and several properties were defined for each, such as flows and services. It was then shown how to model these interfaces by describing a standard set of views that allow different aspects of any interface to be represented.

Finally, all of these views were captured as part of an overall framework definition using the Framework for Architecture framework. This framework itself comprises a number of views that are used to describe the model.

Understanding the fundamental structure of a system is an essential...