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Systems Integration

Decision-making challenges in system integration – insights from the Railforum conference

On Tuesday, 20th November we visited the Railforum conference on system integration in the railway sector. The objective of this event was to create a shared understanding of system integration in the railway sector by sharing knowledge and experience.

The event was organized as follows; after a short introduction to the conference stressing the importance and objectives of the Railforum event, a model was presented that outlined all the stakeholders involved in system integration, the services they provide and their potential interaction. Afterwards, four different cases were presented that shed light into the past experiences with system integration. Primarily it focused on the challenges encountered during the integration and how to deal with these challenges. Two cases were sector-specific, one addressed the challenges during the testing of the new Amsterdam metro line (North-South line) and the other case introduced the challenges encountered by NS during the introduction of new material for the sprinter FLIRT. It was followed by two presentations introducing the problems of system integration identified in other industries. One of these presentations was shedding light on the integration challenges of a racket explained by Airbus and the other one summarized the issues recognized during the testing of tunnels presented by the Dutch ministry for water and infrastructure. The conference closed with a panel discussion participated by all presenters and the public.Read More »Decision-making challenges in system integration – insights from the Railforum conference

Decision-making in Asset Life Cycle Management (ALCM)

In the course of my master’s thesis I conducted research in the field of Asset Life Cycle Management (ALCM). Over a period of six months I designed and tested an asset decision-making tool at a case company. The applied methodology for the design of the tool is the design science methodology (Hevner, March, Park, & Ram, 2004).

A few of the most relevant challenges to overcome at the company were the following:

  • A strong silo mentality in the organization
  • No alignment between stakeholders in the decision-making process
  • No reliable data across multiple disciplines

Read More »Decision-making in Asset Life Cycle Management (ALCM)

“Systems integration, testing and pilot operations”, An event hosted by Railforum-Review

Systems Integration Event hosted by Railforum

An interesting event on the topic of “systems integration, testing and pilot operations” was hosted by Railforum on 20th of November 2018. Program description of this event can be accessed here. Railforum is a Dutch organization that provides a platform to stakeholders from public transport and railways sector for sharing knowledge, experiences and ideas with each other.  This post is divided into three sections, first section provides a brief summary of main points covered by different speakers during the event and a reflection on their talk. Second section digs deeper into identifying key differences in approaches followed for systems integration and last section mentions some of the best practices of knowledge sharing that were observed during the event. Read More »“Systems integration, testing and pilot operations”, An event hosted by Railforum-Review

Systems of Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SoSEBoK)

The post reviews the article on Systems of Systems (SoS) that was published in Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) v. 1.9.1, released on 16th October 2018 available here. The article covers major topics related to SoS, be it the defining of SoS, its characterizations, types, application domains or standards. However, few areas have been identified within the article, improvement of which will help in improved knowledge sharing among the academic community. Furthermore, the suggestions are proposed with a mindset to facilitate knowledge sharing of not only explicit but also tacit knowledge among multiple stakeholders, where the latter is usually regarded as a key to success of any organizations (Fengjie, Fei, & Xin, 2004) and results in higher innovation quality and operational performance (Wang & Wang, 2012). Read More »Systems of Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SoSEBoK)