In my blog post last month, Understanding Your System, I discussed the importance of the system context and system decomposition when defining the physical design of a system. This month I would like to additionally emphasize the role of functional analysis to define the functional design and explain how MBSE …

Ask any engineer what they do, and once you drill down past the knee-jerk response of “build stuff/make stuff” to the real essence of their profession, they will tell you that they “solve problems.” The very word “engineer” is rooted in the Latin words ingenare (to create, contrive, devise) and …

Commonwealth: May it please the Court, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. The defendant in this case, Commonwealth v. Systems Engineer, stands charged with the modelslaughter of the system model. The deceased model in this case is not an ancillary or limited representation of some aspect of the system, but …

Part I of this series of posts speaks to the first two of the five steps to improving systems engineering: shape your process to converge on a design solution; and maintain a systems perspective throughout your design process. Part III of this series speaks to the final two steps: make …