2.1.1 Revisiting the notion of system - Organizations and Enterprises as systems

Autor: Alain Faisandier
Rok vydání: 2005
Předmět:
Zdroj: INCOSE International Symposium. 15:222-237
ISSN: 2334-5837
DOI: 10.1002/j.2334-5837.2005.tb00664.x
Popis: This paper reports on a study performed for NATO about the opportunity to tailor and use the ISO/IEC 15288 standard as well as Systems Engineering concepts for such an Organization. The objective of applying the standard and SE concepts was to help prioritise, rationalise or align processes, activities and organisations. The result of this study was a report for NATO including explanations of the concepts and their potential application, rules for tailoring the standard, as well as a set of recommendations. The recommendations are not reproduced in this paper; only the “system aspects” are considered here, along with its application to NATO as a complex Organization. Some considerations about ANSI/EIA 632 are added to introduce the notion of “enabling product” and “enabling systems“. This paper discusses how the notion of System can be applied to an Organization and extends the application to Enterprises. The discussion revisits the concept of System in light of current engineering studies and coming back to fundamentals, provides a more precise and more complete definition of this notion. This enhanced definition of System rationalizes the engineering of any kind of system and particularly brings benefits to Organizations and industrial Enterprises viewed as systems. Whether the idea of engineering Organizations and Enterprises as systems is attractive to engineers or others raises questions of feasibility and relevance. Organizations and Enterprises are composed of human beings, hence, defined as “Human Systems“; so the paper ends with some words about human factors that could help or hinder the adoption of these useful rational ideas.
Databáze: OpenAIRE