Logistics Management and Operations Systems Engineering Process

The term systems engineering was coined in the early fifties within military circles. It denoted mega defense systems that were used by the United States military at that time. However, the field has grown into a major discipline that covers almost every form of project development. Whether one is constructing a house, developing an electronic device or initiating a complex transport logistics system, system engineering is one of the key things that be utilized. Though there is no single definition that captures everything that system engineering is, there is one thing that scholars agree with: that it is a multidisciplinary means and model to realizing effective systems (Ryen, 2008; INCOSE, 2016). One of the things that have made systems engineering a successful systems development model is the fact that it defines the required functionality / customer needs in the very first stages of systems development. The process then normally moves to documenting these requirements and then conducting a design synthesis and later, a systems validation is done by looking at the whole problem.

Systems engineering merges individuals from different specialties and professions into a team and then focuses the team effort on an organized development system (Ryen, 2008). Systems engineering integrates not only the technical, but also the business needs to the customers with the objective, producing a quality end product. It is interesting to note the broadness of the definition, i.e. systems development covers the entire systems development process from the definition of needs to the delivery of a complete, functioning system. It entails technical aspects such as definition of requirements and design and also the definition of project activities such as configuration management and risk management (Ryen, 2008).

A perfectly executed SEP (systems engineering process) involves a thorough, repetitive...

Such a process transforms the customer's requirements and needs into a list of system process and product descriptions and to get data for decision making (Lightsey, 2001). The SEP is applied in a sequential manner (one level is tackled at one time before going to the next), adding more detail and description of each system development level (AcqNotes, 2016; Lightsey, 2001). SEP has several components, namely: inputs/outputs; functional analysis as well as allocation; requirements loop; requirements analysis; verification; synthesis; design loop; along with system analysis as well as control (Lightsey, 2001). SEP provides additional levels of descriptions of processes and products with each application. The input of all next level SEP applications is the output of the prior SEP level. One of the key elements of systems engineering is logistics engineering (Blanchard, 2004). Other key elements of system engineering are defined below.
The SEP (Lightsey, 2001)

System Life Cycle

A system Life Cycle is a set of steps that the systems development team will have to follow so as to idealize, evaluate, design, build and implement a new computer system. According to Morris (2016), adhering to a predefined system life cycle increases precision, efficiency and significantly reduces the possibility of product failure. The main elements of a system life cycle are:

A figure depicting a system life cycle (Blanchard, 2004)

Needs Definition Stage

At this stage, the aim is to understand the system, the objective of the project and its viability. This phase involves conducting a feasibility study complete with trade-off analyses and requirements analyses (Stasinopoulos, 2009). It also involves the definition of technical details using the client requirement and industry benchmarks (Stasinopoulos,…