Designing Systems-of-Systems Without Getting Trapped in the Subsystem Maze

摘要

True systems-of-systems are one of the toughest challenges for system engineers. They face the problem to balance complexity of design and project structure against the product's cost during its lifecycle. The main cost driver is undesired redundancy in the product and/or the development process. Here we present a method that enables system engineers to shape the architecture of the system to the needs of the users and the development organisation. First we will give our definition of a system-of-systems, show why they are so important, and what makes them so demanding for the system engineer. After a look at the conventional way to solve the complexity problem and a discussion of its disadvantages we will present our method. We will give an impression how we derived it, and of the variants in applying it.