Developing new products is in many respects the process of identifying and envisagingrnuser needs and bringing those needs into life in a cost-efficient manner, either utilizing existingrntechnologies and solutions, or developing new ones. Product developing organisations arernconstantly challenged since new products must exceed expectations on quality standards in form,rnfit, and function – and that they must stand out from competition. This requires people withrnknowledge in many areas. Consequently, it is a multi-disciplinary process involving many parallelrnactivities, such as product planning, design, production, marketing and after-sale.rnSystems Engineering (SE) has become increasingly important in these organizations in order tornmanage the shear complexity of managing large scale development projects and secure the qualityrnstandards for all emergent properties of a system. The main driver for introducing SE is that therncomplexity and interconnectedness of systems continues to grow and the growing shift of focus tornthe complete offer rather than the product itself. However, there exist little research summarizingrnexperiences of implementing SE, and there remain uncertainties as to how SE should be tailored tornspecific settings in order to add value to a development organization. Especially, focus needs to bernput on managing the complexity of creating product variety.rnThis paper summarises our experiences from the continuous work to implement and standardisernSystems Engineering practices within a global corporation in the transport solution industry. Thisrnincludes a review of reports on SE implementations, a short description of the Volvo Group, and arnsummary of our experiences when implementing SE at various units and organisational levels.
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