Traditional systems engineering

The concentric rings reflect increasing complexity, uncertainty, and variability as one moves out from the origin. The innermost ring is the domain of traditional program management and traditional systems engineering. Such efforts are usually characterized by well-bounded problems, predictable behavior, and a stable environment. 

Thus, the systems which engineers design and build today face additional, fundamentally different challenges from those they confronted in the past. When systems were bounded by relatively static, well-understood requirements, the methods of traditional systems engineering (TSE), well codified in industry standards (i.e., ANSI/EIA-632, lEEE-STD-15288, and IEEE-1220), were sufficient and powerful. The increased complexity of problems and solutions necessitates extending the discipline into the domain of ESE. 

F. 27.3 Traditional systems engineering approach according to VDI2206 [33]... 

Cost accounting is a well-developed discipline, with numerous methods and standards. And normal life cycle costing, as it is employed in traditional systems engineering, is described in various publications [4]. The life cycle aspect is reflected in our approach, as both the Cost and the Revenue are measured per accounting period over the life of the project. But as noted at the end of Sec. C4.3, when working in the functional domain, cost is seen as a consequence of requiring the plant to have a particular functionality. Consequently, the primary requirement on a cost accounting appropriate to the functional domain is that the cost elements correspond to primary elements. The additional properties of the primary elements, such as reliability and durability, as may be expressed by secondary elements, influence these cost elements. 

The first perspective is the traditional safety engineering approach (Section 2.4). This stresses the individual factors that give rise to accidents and hence emphasizes selection, together with motivational and disciplinary approaches to accident and error reduction. The main emphasis here is on behavior modification, through persuasion (motivational campaigns) or pimishment. The main area of application of this approach has been to occupational safety, which focuses on hazards that affect the individual worker, rather than process safety, which emphasizes major systems failures that could cause major plant losses and impact to the environment as well as individual injury. 

The traditional safety engineering approach to accident causation focuses on the individual rather than the system causes of error. Errors are primarily seen as being due to causes such as lack of motivation to behave safely, lack of discipline or lack of knowledge of what constitutes safe behavior. These are assumed to give rise to "unsafe acts." These unsafe acts, in combination with "unsafe situations" (e.g., imguarded plant, toxic substances) are seen as the major causes of accidents. 

I.I. The Traditional Safety Engineering (TSE) View The traditional safety engineering view is the most commonly held of these models in the CPI (and most other industries). As discussed in Chapter 1, this view assumes that human error is primarily controllable by the individual, in that people can choose to behave safely or otherwise. Unsafe behavior is assumed to be due to carelessness, negligence, and to the deliberate breaking of operating rules and procedures designed to protect the individual and the system from known risks. 

Traditional Safety Engineering A safety management policy that emphasizes individual responsibility for system safety and the control of error by the use of motivational campaigns and punishment. 

The primary differences, then, between development of expert systems and more traditional software engineering are found in steps one and two, above. First, the problems chosen will involve symbolic reasoning, and will require the transfer of expertise from experts to a knowledge base. Second, rapid prototyping, the "try it and see how it works, then fix it or throw it away" approach will play an important role in system development. 

Frankie Wood-Black of ConocoPhillips mentioned that there can be unintended consequences of new energy systems and that scientists will need to consider these potential unintended consequences when new technologies are being developed. She used hydrogen and electric cars as an example. Since those vehicles are much quieter than vehicles with traditional combustion engines, pedestrians do not hear them and are at risk of being involved in an accident. 

The introduction of solid catalysts into a traditionally non-catalytic free-radical process like combustion occurred in recent years under the influence of two pressures, the energy crisis and the increased awareness of atmospheric emissions. The major applications of catalytic combustion are twofold at low temperatures to eliminate VOC s and at high temperatures (>1000 C) to reduce NOx emission from gas turbines, jet motors, etc. Both these applications are briefly reviewed here. Some recent developments in high-temperature catalytic combustion are trend-setters in catalysis and hence of particular interest. For instance, novel materials are being developed for catalytic applications above 1000 C for sustained operation for over one year. Where material/catalyst developments are still inadequate, systems engineering is coming to the rescue by developing multiple-monolith catalyst systems and the so-called hybrid reactors. 

In parallel to this push for extending the borders of chemical process systems engineering to areas that have been traditionally the reserve of industrial engineers, a new concept of supply chemical chain was recently discussed in detail by Grossmann and Westerberg (2000), and in the United States National Academies report by Breslow and Tirrell (2003). The chemical supply chain extends from the molecule level to the whole enterprise. Breslow and Tirrell (2003) suggest that ... 

---