ABSTRACT
The application of systems thinking principles to systems engineering is synergistic, resulting in superior systems, products, and designs. Yet there is little practical information available in the literature that describes how this can be done.
Systems thinking and systems engineering are not the same. Systems thinking has been characterised as a perspective, a language, and a set of tools. It is a holistic perspective that acknowledges the relationships among system components and between the components and the environment are as important (in terms of system behaviour) as the components themselves.
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the development of successful systems. It focuses on defining customer needs and required functionality early in the development cycle, documenting requirements, and then proceeding with design, synthesis, validation, deployment, maintenance, evolution, and eventual disposal of a system. Systems engineering integrates a wide range of engineering disciplines into a team effort to create a structured development process that proceeds from an initial concept to the production and operation of a system.
This chapter analyses systems thinking and systems engineering. It gives definitions of a system, systems-of-systems (SoS), enabling-systems, system lifecycle, and other topics related to systems. It explains that systems thinking is an underpinning skill required to do systems engineering.
