Reinhard Haberfellner - Systems Engineering: Fundamentals and Applications

This book is published under the imprint Birkhuser, www.birkhauser-science.com by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This book is a translation of the successful German textbook Systems Engineering Grundlagen und Anwendung, which is in its 14th edition and focuses on the basics of problem-solving and the necessary ambidexterity to turn problems into solutions systems design and project management. In recent years, we have witnessed increasing requests by European, American, and Asian colleagues, along with German universities, as more and more lectures are being given in English, to provide an English translation of our book.

What are the success factors of the book we are presenting here? Is there really a need for an additional book on systems engineering in English? What advantages does it offer in comparison with other offerings? In our view, there are several reasons for this publication.

The term systems engineering was originally coined at Bell Labs in the 1940s. Best practices and formal methods of systems engineering have emerged since the 1950s and have been codified in a number of standards and handbooks. These standards are very helpful in giving structure and consistency to the systems engineering process. However, they often promote a specialist nomenclature and mindset and a rather rigid approach to systems engineering that is sometimes difficult to apply in practice. This is especially true for small and medium-sized enterprises in addition to those from the non-aerospace and defense industries. Often, these concepts and standards were the product of teams consisting of several hundreds or even thousands of members from various sectors and companies, which makes these concepts more extensive, more complex, and more difficult to understand. Looking at projects in industry, the basics are often forgotten or poorly implemented.

Hence, what is needed is a structured, common-sense, and transparent approach to solving problems that can be understood by a large range of individuals and not only by highly skilled technical professionals. This is what this book offers.

Our concept is originally based on the work of A.D. Hall, in the industrial engineering department of ETH-Zrich (BWI) revived his ideas in the 1970s and developed a similar concept, which has been continuously refined over the last few decades and may therefore be called the Hall/BWI approach.

In other words: We do not offer rigid processes or procedures but rather a mental framework that gives direction but has to be interpreted intelligently by project teams and their leaders. The success of a project is in our opinion not mainly based on the use of cutting-edge methods and tools , which often are not known or understood by other team members. Many experienced experts are convinced that the reason why most projects fail in practice is that basic systems engineering wisdom was not observed by the project teams and/or the decision-making authorities. This is what we want to focus on.

We hope you enjoy this book. A classic approach for modern times.