The recent attention to the Zika virus and its potential global spread illustrates once again that the truly important questions occur at the systems level. Without systems thinking the questions can “hide” from decision makers emerging only later as damaging unintended consequences of decisions made without an adequate systems understanding. …

Influenced by the broad applicability of systems engineering and the fact that it is generally taught top-down, many systems engineers believe that they consistently engage in a variant of clean-sheet design. While systems engineering certainly enables fresh thinking and new looks into a problem space, the reality is that we …

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 …

I recently had the pleasure of attending an expo where undergraduate research was presented. One particular project testing formal propositions regarding systems vs systems of systems (SoS) caught my eye. We generally think we understand the basic concepts as we work with somewhat loose definitions. As we move to formal …