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Systems Thinking Part 3: The Systems Lifecycle

Table of Contents The Core Idea: Operational Effectiveness Is a Lifecycle Property Design Cause and Operational Effect The Operational Effectiveness Model The Operational Concept Drives the Maintenance Concept Systems and Supportability Engineering Process FMECA: Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis Fault Tree Analysis Maintenance Task Analysis Lifecycle Cost, Total Cost of Ownership, and Profitability Lifecycle Monitoring Putting It All Together What I want to do here is share some notes from a course on systems lifecycle engineering. This should be treated as a learning guide to reliability, maintainability, supportability, durability, availability, FMECA, fault trees, maintenance task analysis, and lifecycle support planning. The Core Idea: Operational Effectiveness Is a Lifecycle Property A system is not successful simply because it performs well in a controlled test or meets a narrow set of technical specifications. A system is successful when it can p...

Systems Thinking Part 2: Systems Engineering

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Table of Contents Core architectural views Core Process Visualizing this Process Integrated System Model Detailed Design Verification, Validation, Learning, and Evolution Cross-cutting systems thinking lenses Iteration and feedback logic Conclusion What I'll try to do here is merge concepts from a systems architecture course I'm currently taking, and a video titled "Systems thinking as it applies to systems engineering" by systems engineer Joseph Kassner ; who was describing some of the shortcomings of systems engineering pedagogy. Kassner's main thesis is that systems engineering can be taught incomplete. He argues that it is frequently shown as a strict process: identify needs, derive requirements, generate concepts, define the system, and move toward design. While this is the core process, he argues it's often only tangentially presented as a way of thinking: the big picture, thinking in terms of fu...