Many related fields may be considered tightly coupled to systems engineering. The following areas have contributed to the development of systems engineering as a distinct entity:
Cognitive systems engineering Cognitive systems engineering (CSE) is a specific approach to the description and analysis of
human-machine systems or
sociotechnical systems. The three main themes of CSE are how humans cope with complexity, how work is accomplished by the use of
artifacts, and how human-machine systems and socio-technical systems can be described as joint cognitive systems. CSE has since its beginning become a recognized scientific discipline, sometimes also referred to as
cognitive engineering. The concept of a Joint Cognitive System (JCS) has in particular become widely used as a way of understanding how complex socio-technical systems can be described with varying degrees of resolution. The more than 20 years of experience with CSE has been described extensively.
Configuration management Like systems engineering,
configuration management as practiced in the
defense and
aerospace industry is a broad systems-level practice. The field parallels the taskings of systems engineering; where systems engineering deals with requirements development, allocation to development items and verification, configuration management deals with requirements capture, traceability to the development item, and audit of development item to ensure that it has achieved the desired functionality and outcomes that systems engineering and/or Test and Verification Engineering have obtained and proven through objective testing.
Control engineering Control engineering and its design and implementation of
control systems, used extensively in nearly every industry, is a large sub-field of systems engineering. The cruise control on an automobile and the guidance system for a ballistic missile are two examples. Control systems theory is an active field of applied mathematics involving the investigation of solution spaces and the development of new methods for the analysis of the control process.
Industrial engineering Industrial engineering is a branch of
engineering that concerns the development, improvement, implementation, and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, material, and process. Industrial engineering draws upon the principles and methods of engineering analysis and synthesis, as well as mathematical, physical, and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design to specify, predict, and evaluate results obtained from such systems.
Production Systems Engineering Production Systems Engineering (PSE) is an emerging branch of Engineering intended to uncover fundamental principles of production systems and utilize them for analysis, continuous improvement, and design.
Interface design Interface design and its specification are concerned with assuring that the pieces of a system connect and inter-operate with other parts of the system and with external systems as necessary. Interface design also includes assuring that system interfaces are able to accept new features, including mechanical, electrical, and logical interfaces, including reserved wires, plug-space, command codes, and bits in communication protocols. This is known as
extensibility.
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) or Human-Machine Interface (HMI) is another aspect of interface design and is a critical aspect of modern systems engineering. Systems engineering principles are applied in the design of
communication protocols for
local area networks and
wide area networks.
Mechatronic engineering Mechatronic engineering, like systems engineering, is a multidisciplinary field of engineering that uses dynamic systems modeling to express tangible constructs. In that regard, it is almost indistinguishable from Systems Engineering, but what sets it apart is the focus on smaller details rather than larger generalizations and relationships. As such, both fields are distinguished by the scope of their projects rather than the methodology of their practice.
Operations research Operations research supports systems engineering. Operations research, briefly, is concerned with the optimization of a process under multiple constraints.
Performance engineering Performance engineering is the discipline of ensuring a system meets customer expectations for performance throughout its life. Performance is usually defined as the speed with which a certain operation is executed or the capability of executing a number of such operations in a unit of time. Performance may be degraded when operations queued to execute are throttled by limited
system capacity. For example, the performance of a
packet-switched network is characterized by the end-to-end packet transit delay or the number of packets switched in an hour. The design of high-performance systems uses analytical or simulation modeling, whereas the delivery of high-performance implementation involves thorough performance testing. Performance engineering relies heavily on
statistics,
queueing theory, and
probability theory for its tools and processes.
Program management and project management Program management (or project management) has many similarities with systems engineering, but has broader-based origins than the engineering ones of systems engineering.
Project management is also closely related to both program management and systems engineering. Both include
scheduling as an engineering support tool in assessing interdisciplinary concerns under the management process. In particular, the direct relationship of resources, performance features, and risk to the duration of a task or the
dependency links among tasks and impacts across the
system lifecycle are systems engineering concerns.
Proposal engineering Proposal engineering is the application of scientific and mathematical principles to design, construct, and operate a cost-effective proposal development system. Basically, proposal engineering uses the "
systems engineering process" to create a cost-effective proposal and increase the odds of a successful proposal.
Reliability engineering Reliability engineering is the discipline of ensuring a system meets customer expectations for reliability throughout its life (i.e., it does not fail more frequently than expected). Next to the prediction of failure, it is just as much about the prevention of failure. Reliability engineering applies to all aspects of the system. It is closely associated with
maintainability,
availability (
dependability or
RAMS preferred by some), and
integrated logistics support. Reliability engineering is always a critical component of safety engineering, as in
failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) and
hazard fault tree analysis, and of
security engineering.
Risk management Risk management, the practice of assessing and dealing with
risk is one of the interdisciplinary parts of Systems Engineering. In development, acquisition, or operational activities, the inclusion of risk in tradeoffs with cost, schedule, and performance features involves the iterative complex configuration management of traceability and evaluation to the scheduling and requirements management across domains and for the
system lifecycle that requires the interdisciplinary technical approach of systems engineering. Systems Engineering has Risk Management define, tailor, implement, and monitor a structured process for risk management which is integrated into the overall effort.
Safety engineering The techniques of
safety engineering may be applied by non-specialist engineers in designing complex systems to minimize the probability of safety-critical failures. The "System Safety Engineering" function helps to identify "safety hazards" in emerging designs and may assist with techniques to "mitigate" the effects of (potentially) hazardous conditions that cannot be designed out of systems.
Security engineering Security engineering can be viewed as an
interdisciplinary field that integrates the
community of practice for control systems design, reliability, safety, and systems engineering. It may involve such sub-specialties as
authentication of system users, system targets, and others: people, objects, and processes.
Software engineering From its beginnings,
software engineering has helped shape modern systems engineering practice. The techniques used in the handling of the complexities of large software-intensive systems have had a major effect on the shaping and reshaping of the tools, methods, and processes of Systems Engineering. ==See also==