The recent INCOSE International Symposium in Edinburgh, Scotland featured a challenging and thought-provoking keynote address by Professor Larry Leifer of Stanford University. Taking an unorthodox approach to engineering design, Professor Leifer challenged symposium delegates to incorporate thinking from the world of art and design into their engineering problem-solving processes. This …

This 2 minute video captures and explains the main points of this blog post. “Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear, we can begin to feed.” Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter Oysters Rockefeller, oysters on the half shell, oyster stew, fried oysters . . . for the appreciative connoisseur, …

It is a widely known principle of systems engineering that the combination of different elements in a system produces results not possible for the elements alone or even in the aggregate. The INCOSE definition follows the general pattern of others in stating “A system is a construct or collection of …

Requirements models, activity models, interface models, parametric models, reliability models, thermal models, power models, finite element models, … the list goes on and on. In this drive towards model-based systems engineering (MBSE) – and ultimately model-based engineering to connect the product lifecycle – how can we make sense of this …