Applying Systems Engineering Research Articles

Digging Into Mining 4.0: Applying Systems Engineering to a Digital Spare Parts Management System

Digging Into Mining 4.0: Applying Systems Engineering to a Digital Spare Parts Management System

Why Mountain Bike Trails Try to Scare You Off

ABSTRACTINCOSE Certification looks for multiple pillars of skills. Some candidates have a pillar in Systems Engineering, a pillar in other Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) skills, and a pillar in a domain (or multiple pillars in these areas). What does that look like on an application for INCOSE Certified Systems Engineering Professional (CSEP)? How do our Certification Application Reviewers (CARs) assess it? This article goes far from the commonly discussed domains and products of systems engineering and looks at how leading a bike ride can be done better by using systems engineering principles. It concludes with whether applying Systems Engineering in such an unusual case is enough to qualify a candidate for CSEP.

Crafting an Experience‐Based Master's Program in Systems Engineering

AbstractThe Professional Masters in Applied Systems Engineering (PMASE) program provides students with practical and academic material in a setting like a typical work environment. This paper describes the first course in the two‐year program from the perspective of how a “high touch” course provides learning depth. It describes the approach used to provide students with a realistic environment giving academic and practical experience balancing work and studies in an intensive program which culminates in a capstone project. The paper should be of interest to companies and universities interested in a holistic, condensed systems engineering training program.

Applying Systems Engineering framework for architecting a Smart Parking System within a Smart City

AbstractA Smart Parking System is an important feature in any Smart City, as it hopes to address a persistent challenge in urban mobility. Various technology‐based solutions have been developed. However, in such complex societal systems, it is important to consider various stakeholders and interfaces with other systems to choose an architecture that works efficiently for the given context. In this paper, we present the application of the Systems Engineering framework to develop a Smart Parking System architecture to meet the needs of a hypothetical Smart City. The framework shows the application of methods to analyse the context, prioritise needs, define and formally model alternate architectures, choose between the alternatives, and the use of a simulation model to validate requirements derived for the chosen architecture. Such systematic application of Systems Engineering methods can help planners and designers to negotiate complexities and avoid getting locked into sub‐optimal technological solutions.

Coordination Control for Hospital Referral With Multitype Patients

Service coordination among hospitals is a crucial strategy to improving care outcomes and operational efficiency of healthcare delivery systems. This article proposes a referral cooperation system where patients can be referred from one upper-level hospital (ULH) to one lower-level hospital (LLH) for services provided in both types of hospitals with similar service qualities. For multitype patients with different disease conditions, a method for determining the types and quantities of patients that should be referred is explored based on ensuring the interests of the ULH and LLH simultaneously. This article proposes a threshold control method to address these issues along with the Pareto-based negotiation process to implement referral. The control decisions of both ULH and LLH can be achieved by the developed Pareto optimization based on particle swarm optimization-optimal computing budget allocation (POPSO-OCBA) simulation optimization method. To implement the threshold control easily, we further propose a simplified referral control method and conclude that when the flow variability is small, the method can approach similar effects as the previously proposed control while significantly reducing the administrative costs. The methodologies are studied using numerical investigation and a real case exploration in Shanghai. The results show that the methodologies are effective in helping to make the decisions in practice. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Note to Practitioners</i> —Under the tide of the sharing economy, healthcare providers are more ready to coordinate on delivering integrated care to patients, especially on care transition operations. With the government’s promotion of hospital alliances, hospitals should pay increasing attention to dynamic care transition control at the operational level to ensure better quality of service. This article investigates an easily implementable threshold control policy for patient referral coordination, which is expected to aid hospitals in dealing with imbalanced resource utilization to share service requests based on their respective resource availability. More importantly, we expect that the derived Pareto frontier of control thresholds can help the hospitals with the presentation of quantitative evidence for facilitating the negotiation on the control agreement of patient referral coordination. At the same time, the control-based methodology proposed can help hospitals to make decisions on their implementation strategy. A case study on negotiating the control agreement between a representative urban-area comprehensive hospital and its partner is provided in this article. We emphasize the importance of applying system engineering and mathematical modeling to study the referral cooperation system and real-time patient control decisions through our analyses.

Battlefield Mapping by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm: Applied Systems Engineering Processes and Architectural Considerations From System of Systems

For many years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm (UAVs) have been implemented as stand-alone systems for various applications. Advances in technology necessitate the need for the complexity of the systems to rise to a level higher than ever. The capability needs today require the use of multiple systems to act together to accomplish a common goal that is unachievable with a single system. The use of multiple UAVs in an autonomous, or semi-autonomous, nature to accomplish this higher-level goal is known as a UAV Swarm system of systems. In designing a system with the complexity of a UAV Swarm there are many aspects that must be taken into careful consideration. This article will identify the SoS principles and considerations for developing and deploying a UAV Swarm for Battlefield Mapping using System Modeling Language. The design of the developed battlefield SoS will utilize standard Systems Engineering processes, adapted Systems Engineering processes for Systems of Systems, and architecture representation models. Each of these key utilities will be analyzed to provide guidance and considerations for SoS Engineering of the UAV Swarm.

Role Model for Systems Engineering Application

AbstractTwenty-three years ago, Sheard published a very well-known description of Systems Engineering roles. Each role represents and defines activities and tasks to be taken into account for performing Systems Engineering through the entire system life cycle. As today's more and more complex systems require different considerations and approaches, these activities and tasks have changed and thereby the description of the role model need to be updated. This work introduces the “Role Model for Systems Engineering Application”, which is adapted to today's circumstances, with the intention to give practitioners guidance in applying Systems Engineering. For this purpose, results from literature as well as from research projects and industrial applications experience were analyzed and combined to an updated role description.

Transformational Effects of Applying Systems Engineering in Laboratory Scientific Research

Through case study analysis of physicists working in quantum systems, we establish that knowledge of systems engineering (SE) will benefit scientists by ensuring that experimental apparatus is robust and fully meets the experiment requirements. We suggest a significant change in the training of early career research scientists to ensure that they have a strong appreciation of the systems approach and experience of applying SE techniques. Two case studies were used: the first was a detailed analysis of increasing levels of SE in the development of a three-dimensional (3-D) printer for fabricating superconducting nanocircuitry. Applying SE techniques improved record keeping, reduced the risk of failure modes, and took better account of future development through which scientific discovery may be exploited in practical devices. The second case study focused on a group of 30 quantum physics Ph.D. students undertaking a short-course in basic SE, and used their opinions to check and add confidence to the findings of the first case study. A variety of tools were used in both studies and, in both the cases, the Functional Failure Means Effects Analysis technique was considered by participants to be most useful. Recommendations are made for the future training of early career scientists to include some light-weight SE.

Application of System Engineering to Project Management

System engineering in complex systems has transitioned into a well detailed, universally accepted, client-oriented methodology. Unfortunately, this approach hasn't been adopted in most commercially mandated research and development organizations. This article acknowledges that to improve the success of projects, it is essential to understand the benefits of managing product requirement with system engineering. In discussion is the application of system engineering in improving the success rate through better requirement handling. It presents the elements of the relationship between system engineering and project management. The findings suggest that the full importance of applying system engineering can only be enjoyed if other pre-requisites on prudent decision-making are applied. Furthermore, the findings suggest guidance on ways of adopting system-engineering (SE) practices when implementing in large-scale engineering projects.

Adapting LOD definition to meet BIM uses requirements and data modeling for linear infrastructures projects: using system and requirement engineering

BackgroundWithin the current organization of design activities it is difficult to fully realize the potential of BIM (Building Information Modelling). In BIM processes, it is necessary to identify and exchange the specific information that is relevant in the exchange information requirements of each project. The concept of level of detail of the information is a tool for describing and quantifying the information that should be exchanged. But the existing definitions of level of detail of information are not easily usable. Precise definitions of methodology, tools and principles are needed to redefine this concept and to use it in order to define the elements of information that are relevant to be exchanged.MethodsThe authors propose the use of System Engineering and Requirements Engineering to define BIM uses and the relevant level of detail of information and its modelling concerned by each BIM use. The authors first explain why, in this context, the existing definitions of LOD, which can mean level of detail, level of development, level of definition, etc., are not sufficient and not always coherent. They demonstrate through real use cases that System Engineering and Requirement Engineering are a part of this methodology and propose, using formalisms, to describe each BIM use in detail.ResultsThe authors apply two different approaches to defining the relevant information to each BIM use. Using a top-down conceptual approach they show that Level Of Detail (LOD) is a crucial element in defining the content of a BIM use. They then verify the practicality of their proposal using a bottom-up approach based on three use cases (acoustic studies, safety audit, sizing drainage system). These cases studies allow the authors to address different kinds of systems and objects within a whole infrastructure project. They represent domain use cases (acoustic and drainage) and coordination use cases (safety audit). This part of the work is based on the L2 project in Marseille, which is a Public Private Partnership for expressways.As a result, a methodology is proposed both to redefine the level of detail of information concept and to describe how this concept is used to complete the BIM uses definition. The system engineering and requirement engineering methods are partially adapted to infrastructure projects. These elements facilitate the description of BIM uses expected in BIM Execution Plans. It was necessary to change the definitions of LOD in order to make them compatible with the methods of requirement management.ConclusionsDesign activities should be reorganized toward the common goal of meeting project needs and requirements. The authors demonstrate that the best way to meet requirements is to define BIM uses using a new definition of the level of detail of information. It has first to consider requirements that have to be reached through BIM and then define the relevant level of detail of information, using the concept of abstraction of reality. To do it well, applying system engineering and requirement engineering, adapted to infrastructure project, is required. To validate this proposal on an entire project, more use cases will be tested in further work.

A modified collaborative model to improve surgical flow health care processes in Veterans Affairs Medical Centers

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Office of Systems Redesign and Improvement, in collaboration with the VHA National Surgery Office and Veterans Affairs Center for Applied Systems Engineering (VA-CASE) - Veterans Engineering Resource Center (VERC), conducted a national process improvement initiative in Fiscal Year 2012 to promote more effective and efficient use of surgical unit resources. This improvement effort adopted a modified collaborative model with the incorporation of symposia and Rapid Process Improvement Workshops (RPIWs) to address concerns from collaborative teams for a more efficient surgical flow. Throughout the seven-month duration of the initiative, 20 teams participated and completed a total of 468 Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles to implement changes and improve performance levels in defined measures. At the conclusion, on average, teams were able to improve performance on the first case on-time start rate by 24%, mean turnover time by 14%, cancellation rate by 5%, and Operating Room (OR) utilization by 8%. The projected annual Cost Savings was estimated to be nearly $25 million. This modified improvement model overcame some of the challenges experienced in a traditional improvement collaborative model such as lack of clarity of clear roles and responsibilities of team members and clear and consistent aims. The operations in surgical flow were improved in multiple ways to achieve overall better performance. Future improvement initiatives have the potential to further enhance performance outcomes by focusing even more efforts on the preparation phase, increasing team participation and leadership buy-in, utilizing on-going reports that track team progress and focusing on sustain and spread.

Whose Line is it Anyway? Using MBSE in the Management and Acceptance of the Defence Lines of Development

AbstractAs we continue to apply Systems Engineering and Model Based Approaches to the acquisition of complex and closely coupled systems, the ability to map, analyse and manage the interfaces across all the component elements of a capability presents a significant challenge. This paper provides an overview of the application of a Model Based Systems Engineering Approach to a case study, supported by the Whole‐of‐System Analytical Framework (WSAF), to manage the integration and acceptance of the Defence Lines of Development (DLOD) and its application to a case study in the United Kingdom (UK) defence acquisition domain. The approach seeks to provide the ability to conduct analysis of DLOD elements down to a significant level of granularity, including the inter‐ and intra‐DLOD dependencies. The aim being to provide a comprehensive, consistent and systematic view of the DLODs across a complex and disparate stakeholder landscape. This supports the ability to manage the integration and acceptance of the DLODs which, when successfully effected, deliver military capability.

Applying Systems Engineering Reduces Radiology Transport Cycle Times in the Emergency Department.

IntroductionEmergency department (ED) crowding is widespread, and can result in care delays, medical errors, increased costs, and decreased patient satisfaction. Simultaneously, while capacity constraints on EDs are worsening, contributing factors such as patient volume and inpatient bed capacity are often outside the influence of ED administrators. Therefore, systems engineering approaches that improve throughput and reduce waste may hold the most readily available gains. Decreasing radiology turnaround times improves ED patient throughput and decreases patient waiting time. We sought to investigate the impact of systems engineering science targeting ED radiology transport delays and determine the most effective techniques.MethodsThis prospective, before-and-after analysis of radiology process flow improvements in an academic hospital ED was exempt from institutional review board review as a quality improvement initiative. We hypothesized that reorganization of radiology transport would improve radiology cycle time and reduce waste. The intervention included systems engineering science-based reorganization of ED radiology transport processes, largely using Lean methodologies, and adding no resources. The primary outcome was average transport time between study order and complete time. All patients presenting between 8/2013–3/2016 and requiring plain film imaging were included. We analyzed electronic medical record data using Microsoft Excel and SAS version 9.4, and we used a two-sample t-test to compare data from the pre- and post-intervention periods.ResultsFollowing the intervention, average transport time decreased significantly and sustainably. Average radiology transport time was 28.7 ± 4.2 minutes during the three months pre-intervention. It was reduced by 15% in the first three months (4.4 minutes [95% confidence interval [CI] 1.5–7.3]; to 24.3 ± 3.3 min, P=0.021), 19% in the following six months (5.4 minutes, 95% CI [2.7–8.2]; to 23.3 ± 3.5 min, P=0.003), and 26% one year following the intervention (7.4 minutes, 95% CI [4.8–9.9]; to 21.3 ± 3.1 min, P=0.0001). This result was achieved without any additional resources, and demonstrated a continual trend towards improvement. This innovation demonstrates the value of systems engineering science to increase efficiency in ED radiology processes.ConclusionIn this study, reorganization of the ED radiology transport process using systems engineering science significantly increased process efficiency without additional resource use.

Effectiveness of Systems Engineering Techniques on New Product Development: Results from Interview Research at Corning Incorporated

In new product development (NPD) in the commercial (as opposed to military/aerospace) environment, many firms express confidence in the value of applying systems engineering (SE) techniques to the NPD process, even though there is little research to date that systematically evaluates the benefits of SE in the commercial setting. The goal of this paper is therefore to address this gap in the research by testing for SE impact across multiple projects, in this case within a single enterprise, namely Corning Incorporated. To achieve this goal, a joint team from the Systems Engineering Directorate at Corning Incorporated and the Systems Engineering Program at Cornell University conducted interview research to test for systems engineering (SE) effectiveness in product development in a commercial setting. The team conducted 19 interviews of systems engineers and project managers within Corning to evaluate the extent to which they used a range of systems engineering techniques, and the effectiveness of those techniques in improving project performance. The results from the interviews showed that for four selected areas of SE techniques (market, requirements, validation/verification, and trade studies), use of SE could be detected across projects that covered a broad range of Corning’s markets. Furthermore, an association was found between SE input and project performance. Of the 19 projects, 3 had superior project performance, and of these 2 out of 3 had “above average” scores in terms of the extent of SE use. At the other end of the spectrum, 2 out of 19 projects were judged to have “struggling” performance, and in both cases project difficulties were traced back to shortcomings in the use of SE that in turn resulted in low scores in one of the four SE areas. These findings support industry’s general intuition that early investment in the systems approach in NPD pays off in terms of better project outcomes. At the end of the paper, content analysis of quotes from interviews captures project managers’ perspectives on applying systems engineering, and the concluding discussion suggests ways the study of SE effectiveness might be extended to other enterprises.

A New Approach in Applying Systems Engineering Tools and Analysis to Determine Hepatocyte Toxicogenomics Risk Levels to Human Health.

There is an increasing backlog of potentially toxic compounds that cannot be evaluated with current animal-based approaches in a cost-effective and expeditious manner, thus putting human health at risk. Extrapolation of animal-based test results for human risk assessment often leads to different physiological outcomes. This article introduces the use of quantitative tools and methods from systems engineering to evaluate the risk of toxic compounds by the analysis of the amount of stress that human hepatocytes undergo in vitro when metabolizing GW7647 1 over extended times and concentrations. Hepatocytes are exceedingly connected systems that make it challenging to understand the highly varied dimensional genomics data to determine risk of exposure. Gene expression data of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-α (PPARα) 2 binding was measured over multiple concentrations and varied times of GW7647 exposure and leveraging mahalanombis distance to establish toxicity threshold risk levels. The application of these novel systems engineering tools provides new insight into the intricate workings of human hepatocytes to determine risk threshold levels from exposure. This approach is beneficial to decision makers and scientists, and it can help reduce the backlog of untested chemical compounds due to the high cost and inefficiency of animal-based models.

Implementing Systems Engineering in Civil Engineering Consulting Firm: An Evaluation

ABSTRACTThis study explores the challenges that civil engineering consulting firms face in their projects when they apply Systems Engineering (SE). It is also explained were these firms should focus when improving the use of SE. To conduct this study, the methodology of Eisenhardt (Building theories from case study research, Acad Manage Rev 14 [1989], 532–550) for building theory from case study research is used. The extent, to which SE is applied, is assessed in six civil engineering projects, using a newly developed framework containing an extensive list of questions about how and why SE was applied. Based on this assessment, it is shown that there are three major reasons why SE was not applied to the full extent. First, SE procedures and responsibilities were not always clearly established and communicated to team members. Second, team members were in a learning process and did not yet possess all the SE knowledge and skills required. Finally, there was a lack of a demanding client to enforce the use of SE. This paper also presents recommendations for improving the application of SE in projects, related to methods, skills, and the client. Further research should focus on different (kinds of) companies within the civil engineering industry.

4.4.1 On Motivating People to Implement Systems Engineering

AbstractStart by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible1. This paper concentrates on the human aspect in Systems Engineering (SE), and describes the tailored SE approach the California High‐Speed Train System (CHSTS) project took in introducing and implementing SE principles while working with various stakeholders including federal regulators, state agencies, consultants, contractors, managers, peers and suppliers.Today the CHSTS project is applying various SE tools and methods, such as stakeholder management, concept documents, operational scenarios, requirements management (RM) including RM tools, requirements verification traceability matrices (RVTM), system architectures, interface management, verification and validation, version management, process tailoring, and others.The CHSTS is considered a large infrastructure project (LIP). Numerous studies have been performed, and papers written, about the value of Systems Engineering [1]. However, LIPs in general follow a different path, using the construction industry specific Plans, Specifications and Estimates (PS&amp;E) approach. Large infrastructure projects have been reluctant to fully embrace and implement Systems Engineering principles, often for reasons similar to that depicted in Figure 1.Applying Systems Engineering to Large Infrastructure Projects [2]imageThis paper builds on technical papers previously submitted to INCOSE [3, 4], but focuses rather on the soft skills that were used to lead the client, management and peers to introduce and implement Systems Engineering principles. The paper will also address the gradual development of individual SE activities into a comprehensive Systems Engineering approach that will achieve the necessary, the possible and, ultimately, the impossible.

5.4.2 Applying Systems Engineering to Transit Facilities: Advancing Beyond “Building Commissioning”

AbstractThe demand for increased energy efficiency and sustainable facility designs is significantly increasing the complexity of buildings. With the evolution of higher yielding energy efficient performance for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, integration of new sustainable energy technologies and other sustainable green building systems, there is a growing need to ensure that proper systems techniques are implemented across the lifecycle of new transit facility projects.Today there continues to be advances in building automation, energy management and fire alarm/control systems for the monitoring and control of the facility subsystems and systems, which correspondingly adds to the complexity for defining the subsystems interfaces, the required level of integration, and how these interfaces and systems are verified during the construction phase of the project. As a result of this advancing complexity for many facility systems the Building industry developed the “Commissioning process”.This paper describes the evolution of the Commissioning process currently used to deploy facility systems, with a focus on the process application and its deficiencies when compared to a systems engineering approach. Case studies will be provided from New York City Transit's (NYCT) tailored implementation experience and efforts to attain more successful results by further tailoring this Commissioning process to apply systems engineering principles and activities.

8.4.2 On the Right Track: A Case for Applying Systems Engineering to Writing Transport Policy

AbstractGovernment policy documents communicate the high‐level requirements for many of the complex systems at the centre of modern society. In Great Britain, national and European policy has a significant influence on transport systems. However, government publications are often difficult to interpret by the engineers responsible for the delivery of political objectives. The Systems Engineering discipline advocates the importance of accurately defining the purpose of a system early in the development stage. However, efforts in this area are typically focussed on engineering processes. Yet if high‐level requirements are poorly defined at a policy level, this can be detrimental to the success of a system. This research therefore proposes the application of Systems Engineering principles earlier in the lifecycle, during the policy‐writing process. The paper presents an analysis of the 2011 European Union White Paper for transport, which was compared against Systems Engineering best practice. The results show ambiguity, poor structure and lack of traceability in the document. The paper provides an introduction to the problem and identifies a number of alternative approaches for writing policy which will be further explored in future work. The case study focusses on the British rail system, but lessons learned can equally be applied to transport systems worldwide, and other policy‐driven domains.

A Systems Engineering Based Approach for Informing Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) Therapy Improvements

Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) therapy provides stable heart and lung functions via mechanical means for patients with severe but reversible cardiac or respiratory failure [1]. As a result, the survival rate of these patients can improve from 25% to nearly 75% [2]. While there are over 235 medical centers world-wide that employ ECMO [3], no formal standards exist for the composition of an ECMO ‘circuit,’ best practices for operation and maintenance, or training and certification of ECMO specialists. Since 2011 the Professional Masters of Applied Systems Engineering (PMASE) program at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) and medical staff from ECMO centers have collaborated to characterize and improve upon state- of-the-art ECMO therapies. This paper details the collaborators’ work in applying systems engineering principles and practices to ECMO therapies including the use of model based systems engineering (MBSE) to capture the ECMO domain, concept of operations, need statement, high level use cases, requirements, system and user behaviors, and both abstract and concrete structural designs. Finally, the paper explains how this work is applicable towards improvements in data collection, human factors, trade-off analysis for future technology insertions, and other ECMO improvement projects.