Systems Engineering

Life Cycle Engineering

As a process that applies across the whole life cycle, Systems Engineering is not just used in the initial design phase. Part of good design practice is to know when to stop designing. A design can always be improved with more work, but at some point additional work does not provide enough added improvement to justify it. At that point the design should stop, and the system progresses to the next stage, which is usually fabrication and assembly. With time, the original design assumptions for a project, such as the available technology level, or launch to orbit traffic levels, will change. The systems engineering process can then be re-applied to see if a design change, upgrade, or even complete replacement of the system is warranted. Even if the system was optimally designed when first created, future events may require changes. If the system was properly modeled and documented, then monitoring of these external changes will reveal when it is time to restart the engineering.