Bridging the gap across program management, systems engineering, and plant modeling

摘要

Several technical and management disciplines are involved with complex system development and product life cycle management. Often they work in isolation leading to inconsistencies in product specifications, information, and challenges in decision-making. Differences across disciplines in their respective practices, techniques, tools, system metrics, and lack of a common platform for exchanging information have contributed to this gap. Attempts to bridge the gap between systems engineering and project management have been sought through project management methods and through imposing practices from one discipline onto another. It is proposed that a more rigorous approach to bridging this gap be investigated to better enable optimization of objectives, collaboration and cooperation amongst the multiple disciplines. The disciplines of interest in this study are plant modeling, systems engineering, and program management. In bridging the gap, both leveraging techniques and management tools from the different disciplines and adopting six sigma statistical methods are investigated. Common and unique system performance measurements are investigated in working toward a common language. Shared outcome-based measurements such as system and component operational capability levels, predicted and achieved, are also proposed. Options to bring together models from each discipline include multi-disciplinary system design optimization. The different management platforms and visualization techniques are explored with the goal to adopt a common platform to share information. The governance structure that would enable sharing of information across the disciplines forms part of this research.