Systems Engineering Research
The Twenty-first Century has been called “The Systems Century”. In an increasingly highly-integrated, technological world the nature of Systems Design and its conduct within engineering projects is also increasingly complex. Complex systems products cannot be designed in isolation and decisions must be made in the face of increasing complexity, uncertainty and rapid change. At the same time the expectations of stakeholders are becoming more demanding and wide ranging, including demands for system development to be “Faster, Cheaper, Better” and for systems to be operated as Systems of Systems, with high degrees of adaptability and interoperability. To meet these challenges our approaches to System development must evolve to create innovative designs through development practices that are very different from traditional lifecycle approaches. In particular, we need appropriate, systems approaches to understanding Risk and managing system developments so that progress decisions to achieve the successful delivery of systems projects to time and cost and of systems that are successful in the real world throughout their lifecycle.
Our Systems Engineering Research is focused on understanding these modern systems challenges, developing flexible, practical approaches to achieve systems success and working with a range of industrial customers to help them to develop a successful systems capability. We have extensive experience in industry ourselves, enabling us to relate to the realities of systems engineering in complex, extended, often international enterprises.
Our Systems Engineering activities are highly focused on the needs of industry and engagement with major organisations involved in complex, high value, high risk systems, offering educational, training, consultancy and research products and capabilities. We deliver many short courses for industrial customers focused on improving their systems engineering capabilities and we are active in a number of research programmes.
