TABLE OF CONTENTS System architecting The art of creating and building complex systems focusing on scoping, structuring, and certification.
System engineering The science of multidisciplinary engineering disciplines in which decisions and designs are based on their effect on the system as a whole.
Design engineering The science transforming a set of functional requirements into a physical entity that possesses a requisite form, fit, and functionality.
The design of a system evolves through a series of engineering activities that start with identification of the functional need for a system and result in the final physical design. Participation in the evolutionary process of creating a design offers significant opportunities for supportability engineering to interject requirements for improving supportability of the design and limiting cost of ownership. This chapter presents an overview of this process.
The first step in creating a system is to identify the limits of acceptability for any system that is ultimately delivered to the user. The role of system architecting in the design process is to establish a creditable range of acceptability within which the design must reside. System architecting is an art, not a scientific process. It is a nonanalytical, inductive approach to creating complex systems. System architecting uses insights, vision, intuitions, judgment, and feelings or taste as primary ways of guiding its activities. It is a proven to be the most appropriate method of creating new and unprecedented systems. One might say that system architecting provides the foundation and framework within...
