Systems Engineering (SE)
SE can be complex and hard to understand. In the automotive industry, On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) is a specific example of System Engineering, and is an area of expertise discussed elsewhere in detail. While there seems to be a lack of well distributed and recognized standard approaches to SE, better education and training on SE can help. Drawing upon lessons learned from the culture of a company makes the training easier to follow. BAA has proven the effectiveness of introducing SE through building upon, and leading training efforts of System Engineering within a customer's company.
Resources
BAA's resources include engineers focused on detailed electronic, mechanical, chemical, and software design. We know that a project requires ongoing critical analysis of our customers' needs, and acquiring the necessary technical resources to supply services and support. The BAA engineering team's combined experience brings to our customers the benefit of expertise in design and development of web-based products, internal combustion engine controls, cyclotron, remotely-operated mobile systems, gas turbines, as well as a background in guided missile controls for the military.
Systems Engineering defined:
Systems Engineering is the management of one or more components. A system can be defined as any two entities that have a relationship. The components themselves can be systems. A simple analogy might be the relationship between a spoon and cup, a baseball and bat, or the sun as a part of the solar system. A spoon, cup, baseball and bat might be more commonly thought of as components. The sun is complex and certainly a system on its own.
Our choice of what is a system is really dependent on what relationships we choose to emphasize. The sun as it relates to gravitational effects logically includes the planets of the solar system.
System engineering deals with a plethora of information about it. In our case many times these are projects in electrical, mechanical, or chemical engineering fields. It's important for the engineer to have highly developed skills and knowledge in order to hone the thought process used in the gathering and utilization of that material, and thereby achieve the intended goal of the project.
Systems engineering is unlike other engineering in that it's usually already a part of the other disciplines. Electrical engineers for instance have to think of how resistors, capacitors and integrated circuits work together as systems and mechanical engineers have to think how gears interact, a wheel spins on an axle or fluid works in a hydraulic cylinder as examples. In all of these cases systems engineering is the thought process that helps the engineer think thru entities and their relationships. Systems engineering becomes much more of a discipline on its own when the physical components of the system are not primary but information is.
Because SE deals with a lot with information it can be very esoteric. Many times, even references to physical systems are models of those systems. Treating an electrical system as a schematic or written specification is one step removed from the physical components. Requiring components using various technologies to use the same language allows a common discussion and its essential to allow concise discussion of a system and its components--but that adds to the ephemeral nature.
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