Systems Engineering Defined

Abstract

Systems engineering is widely believed to be both critical and beneficial in dealing with complex problems, from its origin until today. Despite this, however, what the term “systems engineering” represents has been the cause of discussions and confusion for a long time. This paper briefly describes the history of systems engineering and its applications, before looking at the problems associated with defining systems engineering and problems associated with already established definitions of the term. This is achieved by reviewing systems engineering definitions found through a collection of a variety of systems engineering literature, including definitions defined by systems engineering standards, the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), and the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK). These definitions are reviewed from a systems thinking perspective while applying systems thinking tools and methods. This paper gathers a collection of key components distilled from the different definitions and their respective literature. The key components are then being considered both individually and holistically before they are integrated to form a new definition of systems engineering, presented at the end of the paper. The propose of the new definition together with a corresponding systemigram is to eliminate some of the confusion associated with systems engineering.