Product Systems Engineering

Part 3 of the SEBoK provided an overview of the methods that have been developed for systems engineering and systems management.

As noted in the section A Short History of SE: Challenge and Response, the original applications of systems engineering were to physical products, especially military projects, communications systems, and aviation products.

Over the last thirty years, there has been increased recognition that services are amenable to the application of systems engineering. This view grew in the software engineering field but has expanded to many other contexts. In the last twenty years there has been recognition that the enterprises that provide products and services themselves can be subject to systems engineering. This coincided with the recognition of systems of systems, and the special techniques required to engineer and manage them.

There are few additional tools or techniques to apply the methods of Part 3 to product systems engineering, in sharp contrast to the extensions necessary to handle service systems engineering, enterprise systems engineering, or systems of systems engineering. Therefore, the bulk of Part 4 will focus on these latter three areas.