The Systems Engineering Toolkit is a set of tools and platforms for
engineering systems better, thereby enabling systems engineers to engineer
better systems.
This means enabling systems engineers to capture the ideas that are in
their heads without having to worry about the set of tools they need in
order to do so.
This means enabling systems engineers to focus on design while having the
computer do the mundane tasks that so often occupy a large amount of an
engineer‘s time.
This means enabling systems engineers to spend 90% of their time on
value-adding effort by providing the right tool for each job.
SE-Toolkit philosophies:
It must be as simple as possible to use, but no simpler.
It must be effective.
It's use must lead to success.
Simple to use means that each task can be performed in the simplest
meaningful way possible. The simplest meaningful way possible will be
different to different users. Simple to use, does not mean that the task
being performed or the system of interest is simple. Indeed, they might be
quite complex.
Effective means that every user action must produce the intended result
which must be immediately recognisable.
Success means measurable success.
CASE STUDIES
CASE STUDIES
Here are some case studies demonstrating the application of the
SE-Toolkit to the design of various systems.
Theoretical System
Bicycle
Paraglider
Flight Simulator
FUNDAMENTALSFUNDAMENTALS
FUNDAMENTALS
At the heart of the SE-Toolkit is the model.
The model is an abstract representation of the system of interest.
When designing any system there are three things that need to be accounted
for:
the system of interest (SOI) itself;
the system used to develop the SOI, in this case: the engineering
team, their organisation and their tools;
and the external environment over which the designer of the SOI has
no control.
The SE-Toolkit provides tools to analyse and manipulate the model of
the SOI. The model is independent of its representation - which means
that any view of the model is rendered from a defined viewpoint, and
the rendered view is not the model (in the same way that a photograph
of an aircraft is not the aircraft itself). It also means that the
model is independent of the way it is stored.
The tools and techniques provided by the SE-Toolkit are universally
applicable and don't belong to any one individual and therefore are
not proprietary.
The fundamental SE-Toolkit model is made up of elements,
relationships and attributes.
Elements are related to other elements via relationships.
Elements have attributes describing their properties.
In the SE-Toolkit model:
an element cannot have a relationship with itself, and
each element must have a unique name.
The SE-Toolkit model defines the fundamental element types used in
systems engineering:
requirements
functions
components
tests
The fundamental SE-Toolkit model is extended to include elements and
relationships belonging to the system used to develop the SOI such as
those related to system engineering management: documents, concerns,
decisions, and packages (which can be used to group any number and
type of elements together).
SE-Toolkit applications implement all data handling in the browser which
means that data is never sent to any foreign servers and the user is
completely responsible for handling and protecting their own data.
