I mentioned in my last blog about Integration and eluding to its relation to systems engineering. In my humble opinion systems engineering is quite different than integration. The planning is different, the structures are different, and the thinking is different. Systems engineers (as others) do systems integration planning and objects integration itself. If you take any device or system(s), thing, wicket (well let’s just call whatever ‘it’ is an Object) and connect them in any fashion. Is that the same thing as integration? Maybe to a Project Manager, but not to a Systems Engineer. Project Managers look to ‘solve the problem’. Systems Engineers use integration to seek the difference between solving the right problem in the wrong way, or the wrong problem in the right way.
Integration is a coalesce of objects, interacting in perhaps unpredictable ways. Integration is the unification of the objects through their interaction to provide system-level functionalities and performances. Integration is the combining of systematic series of actions that take place in a definite manner, directed to bring about a particular interaction between objects and sets of objects. Integration is the method of setting up or by chance satisfying the conditions that lead to a set of objects we refer to as a system. Integration is a collaborative, value-enhancing approach to demonstrating functionalities and performance of products and services. Integration is a method that facilities outcomes that are beyond what an individual object can do either individually or by a number of objects acting independently, that is, make things happen that would otherwise not happen. (Langford, 2012)
In my humble opinion, this is the active process of ‘engineering’ systems integration.
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