A SYSTEMS ENGINEERING & INTEGRATION METHODOLOGY FOR COMPLEX SYSTEMS

Understanding the intricacy of a complex system is a major challenge in today’s highly dynamic environment. In addition, managing the lifecycle processes and schedule risks of these complex systems adds to the challenge of achieving program objectives. Complexity is ever present in today’s military system of systems architectures, acquisition lifecycle management processes, and supporting organizational structures. This complexity is often an impediment to the successful development, integration, and transition of capability gap-closing technologies to support our Warfighters’ needs. Over the years, methods to reduce system complexity have taken many forms. The Design Structure Matrix (DSM) is one methodology that has proven very effective in the analysis, management, and integration of complex system architectures, organizational structures, and densely networked processes. DSM enables the user to model, visualize, and analyze the dependencies among the entities of any system—and derive suggestions for system optimization.