Engineering
Engineering is the creative application of science, mathematical methods, and empirical evidence to the innovation, design, construction, operation and maintenance of structures, machines, materials, devices, systems, processes, and organizations. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, and types of application. See glossary of engineering.
Systems Engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking principles to organize this body of knowledge. Issues such as requirements engineering, reliability, logistics, coordination of different teams, testing and evaluation, maintainability and many other disciplines necessary for successful system development, design, implementation, and ultimate decommission become more difficult when dealing with large or complex projects. Systems engineering deals with work-processes, optimization methods, and risk management tools in such projects. It overlaps technical and human-centered disciplines such as industrial engineering, mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, control engineering, software engineering, electrical engineering, cybernetics, organizational studies and project management. Systems engineering ensures that all likely aspects of a project or system are considered, and integrated into a whole.
Systems Engineering
Complex engineering projects should be managed as evolutionary processes that undergo continuous rapid improvement through iterative incremental changes performed in parallel and thus is linked to diverse small subsystems of various sizes and relationships. Constraints and dependencies increase complexity and should be imposed only when necessary. This context must establish necessary security for task performance and for the system that is performing the tasks. In the evolutionary context, people and technology are agents that are involved in design, implementation and function. Management’s basic oversight (meta) tasks are to create a context and design the process of innovation, and to shorten the natural feedback loops through extended measures of performance.
Yaneer Bar-Yam (2003) "When Systems Engineering Fails --- Toward Complex Systems Engineering"; As cited in: Joseph E. Kasser (2010) "Seven systems engineering myths and the corresponding realities"
Systems Engineering
Today at Martin an entirely new concept, known as Martin Systems Engineering, is resulting in the production of new aircraft, guided missiles and electronics weapons designed not as yesterday's flying vehicles but as the coordinated and controlled spaceborne systems of tomorrow. The principle of Martin Systems Engineering now makes possible developments in airpower that may change the shape of things to come-our way.
1953 Advertising text by Glenn L. Martin Company, published in: Aeronautical Engineering Review. (1953) Vol 12. p. 132; Air Force Magazine (1953). Vol. 36. p. 92; American Aviation (1953). Vol. 17. p. 94; Flying Magazine, Dec. 1953; United States Army Combat Forces Journal (1953) Vol. 4, p. 4; and other magazines.
Engineering
There are two laws discrete,
Not reconciled,—
Law for man, and law for thing;
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing