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

Introducing needs and requirements

This section introduces the key concept of needs and discusses how different types of needs exist, such as requirements, capabilities, and goals. We will discuss the importance of defining the exact meaning of the terminology and the MBSE ontology that has been developed throughout this book so far will also be expanded upon to introduce these new concepts. We will start by looking at what needs actually are…

Defining needs

One of the most important concepts associated with systems engineering is that of the need, as shown in the following diagram:

Figure 6.1 – Ontology definition view showing basic needs

The diagram in Figure 6.1 shows an ontology definition view that introduces the concept of a need and its relationship to a system, which is visualized using a SysML block definition diagram.

The diagram shows that one or more needs describe the purpose of one or more systems. The concept of a need...