Engineering of complex systems: Understanding the art side

David Newbern and Jerry Nolte

Systems Engineering, 1999, vol. 2, issue 3, 181-186

Abstract: The engineering of complex systems is both science and art. Although the cause of many difficulties in development of complex systems is the “art” side, this side is frequently ignored since it cannot be conveniently described and quantified. We recommend a conscious recognition of the appropriate role of the art, or judgment side of systems engineering, especially in the key activities of assumption and decomposition. Assumptions are the critical ingredients in both of the key processes of abstraction (representing only the most essential information) and of decomposition (dividing the problem into cleanly partitioned subsets). These two methods (abstraction and decomposition) form the core of any effective approach to engineering complex systems. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Syst Eng 3: 181–186, 1999

Date: 1999
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1520-6858(1999)2:33.0.CO;2-K

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:syseng:v:2:y:1999:i:3:p:181-186

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Systems Engineering from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().