The Necessity to Introduce Systems Engineering into Engineering Education Programs

INTRODUCTION

This article lobbies strongly for the value of more holistic engineering approaches to successfully tackle the increasing complexity of engineering projects and ensure outcomes beneficial to 21st century society.

Engineering is one of the oldest professions. The broad discipline of engineering includes a range of specialized disciplines or fields of application and particular areas of technology. From universities to multinational corporations, have been calling for change in the traditional approach to engineering education and practice. A recurring theme in engineering education is that the complex challenges of this century demand more creative, innovative, and holistic customer-oriented solutions. 

Most companies today are faced with growing competition, increased market demands, and a dynamic drive for change in their products, organizations and ways of working. The fourth industrial revolution presents great opportunities for societies around the world, but also great challenges. Increasing digitization is driving an alignment across engineering sector skills requirements as the boundaries of traditional engineering disciplines are blurring. Both new technologies and the complex mega systems challenges arising in contemporary society require highly interdisciplinary engineering teams characterized by broad intellectual span rather than focused practice within traditional disciplines, it will allow a future where the engineering profession actively grows and evolves, an engineering beyond technological labels ( software, mechanical, electrical, electronics, etc) where isolated training falls to a more powerful profession of broadly educated holistic engineers who manage, lead, and understand complex, interdisciplinary systems. 

Engineers are uniquely positioned to address these challenges, but this requires engineering education to adapt to this new environment. A new kind of engineer is needed; one who can think broadly across disciplines, therefore a much broader, holistic engineering education must become the norm in this century. While the need for holistic and integrated systems approaches in engineering have been recognized and spoken about for some time, we are still attempting to educate 21st-century engineers with a 20th-century curriculum. Today in the world the opportunity of the holistic approach to engineering education is unfortunately a privilege of study available in only a few university programs ( and few countries ). 

THE ROLE OF SYSTEMS ENGINEERING IN THE ENGINEERING CURRICULA 

Engineering derives from the knowledge models and the science based on reductionism and the objectification and control of nature. It is surprising that engineers have not been more interested in holistic and whole systems approaches in the past. This cannot continue, engineering education must rise to the challenge of incorporating more holistic approaches, because engineering is about systems, and so it should be taught. 

In this context, although nowadays most academic programs do not reach the goal ( focused too closely on technical skill ) , systems engineering is expected to become increasingly important. A systems perspective and the fundamental principles of systems engineering will have an important role in the education of all engineers regardless of their specialty in the near future. Engineering is not only about mastering a fixed and known body of deep knowledge ( engineering disciplines ) , but is about the integration of that knowledge into system and product development.

The applications of systems engineering began during the late 1950s because of the race to space, but the formal instruction at universities in systems engineering principles only 40 years ago. Nowadays the international scientific and industrial communities recognize the systems engineering as a methodological basis to create systems of any classes and purposes, but there are still a limited number of university programs in systems engineering. As a result of that fact, nearly all of our engineers are trained and educated primarily as a technical specialist who can solve the problems of development and know how to make separate system elements. 

The higher education system normally confers degrees at the Bachelor, Masters or Doctoral levels. Some universities offer degrees in systems engineering of these types. Of these the most common are master degrees, where graduates of a field other than systems engineering, often another field of engineering, learn additional knowledge and perspectives to enable them to take systems engineering roles and to, potentially, advance to the highest levels of systems engineering responsibility. Education in systems engineering is broken down into two basic categories: systems engineering-centric or domain-centric. Systems engineering-centric programs treat systems engineering as a separate discipline, focusing their courses on systems engineering practice and techniques. Domain-centric systems engineering programs focused on systems engineering in the particular domain chosen by the university and teach a combination of how systems engineering is practiced in the domain. 

The systems engineering discipline grew out of many of the engineering disciplines. Many systems include a wide range of components made of hardware and software, as well as facilities and people. What you must learn is problem definition, systems thinking, systematic thinking, working with people from many specialties (some of which will not be engineering), and integrating ideas and concepts across disciplines. It is difficult to develop system engineering professional competencies in the education system. The education system is developed to, primarily, teach students what they need to know and be able to do to commence practice, but only experience, with the risks and pain of personal involvement can lead to the development of experience, the learning of what works or does not work and the circumstances under which it either works or does not.

The systems engineering, if included into education programs of engineering can become the basis to form a new body of engineering academic programs for different spheres. It can be the foundation that makes possible to create a complex set of competencies necessary for graduates to be satisfactorily adjusted to different professional engineering practices in all our industrial sectors and engineering fields. 

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING PROCESS VS COMPETENCIES

Although following a systems engineering process increases your probability of success. Systems engineering is no miracle cure for all that ails an organization, but it offers significant positive impact to many areas of the organization’s work when developing new complex systems. There are two main objectives of the systems engineering process: to build the right system and build the system right. This means that systems engineering both addresses the task of designing the system as specified and ensuring that the system truly fulfils the customer needs.

To do this, systems engineering employs a range of different processes you can run, which are defined in ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 : 2015 ( see Figure 1 left ). These processes are tailored to the specific need of the organization and the environment in which they are run. Every system has a life-cycle ( see Figure 1 right ). Systems engineering leverages the concept of life cycles to ensure all aspects of the system, from concept through disposal, are considered. A life-cycle thinking creates better systems (think about the end before the beginning). ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2015 is about the system life-cycle processes, and the INCOSE Handbook Edition 4 is consistent with ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2015. These processes are not performed once, but applied iteratively throughout the life-cycle.

Competencies are what engineers need to be successful in their engineering jobs. The core element for successful execution of processes in any engineering organization is its people ( in our case engineering practitioners ). The INCOSE Systems Engineering Competency Framework defines a global standard for those competencies regarded as central to the practice of systems engineering. The five competency areas of the framework are shown in Figure 2. This framework can provide guidance for faculty staff to identify competencies important to systems engineering effectiveness, therefore an interesting reference to select the set competence contents related to systems engineering in future academic engineering programs.

To do so, it is very important to know their influence on each process, those competencies that have a bigger impact for the successful execution of each individual process. Figure 3 shows a mapping of the systems engineering processes to the framework competencies. 

The above Figure 3 has a blank for the relationship between professional competencies ( soft competencies ) and processes. The following Figure 4, Figure 5 and Figure 6 show a mapping of the systems engineering processes to the professional competencies. Yelow means medium influence and green strong influence.

INCOSE RECOGNIZES THE NEED FOR ACADEMIC EDUCATION IN SYSTEMS ENGINEERING 

The International Council on Systems Engineering ( INCOSE ) represents systems engineering professionals from industry, government, and academia worldwide. INCOSE recognizes the need for academic education in systems engineering, and advocates that academic institutions offer more engineering degree programs with strong components in systems engineering and systems thinking. 

INCOSE has recently begun to recognize academic programs as an alternative to the INCOSE knowledge certification exam based on INCOSE Handbook Edition 4as a way for individuals to prove their systems engineering knowledge. University documents their verification methods for student success against the INCOSE knowledge exam learning objectives. Students in these programs will be able to bypass the knowledge exam on their path to becoming an Associate Systems Engineering Professional (ASEP) or Certified Systems Engineering Professional (CSEP). 

CONCLUSION : SYSTEMS ENGINEERING EDUCATION FOR ALL ENGINEERS

Systems engineering is an important tool for creating new generation of engineers who are ready to produce competitive and successful systems. A tool suitable for answering the challenges and for solving a number of problems facing engineering education and engineering nowadays.

Both industry and government have a strong demand for trained, experienced engineers, especially those who can think holistically about complex problems. That is why systems engineering is becoming the key compulsory subject for engineers working for engineering corporations as well as for the leading technical universities of the world.

In order to educate and inspire the present and future generations of engineering students to tackle the pressing challenges of the world, a global systems perspective must be pursued including systems engineering and the related subjects into the engineering curricula.

Universities have not yet broadly embraced teaching systems engineering in their engineering curricula, but there is some movement that is likely to increase over the next years. 

INCOSE supports those academic institutions that have chosen to offer programs that lead to degrees in systems engineering at all levels. Academic institutions are encouraged to integrate systems engineering into the engineering programs, if you need help please contact your national INCOSE Chapter in your country/area or INCOSE Central in USA.