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Engineering Systems Integration
Management Processes
There is a long-standing tradition of separating processes for managing
activities from processes specific to doing work. In systems engineering the
separation is seen with the project manager (whose role is to manage the
project) and the systems engineer (whose role is to orchestrate product development and integration to deliver requisite functionality, performances, and
quality). The project manager guides (works with) the systems engineer
within the context of the organizational processes and external limitations of
time, budget, and resources. The systems engineer works with the multidisciplinary team to determine requirements, and builds the desired solution
within the constraints of time, money, and scope. The project management
processes deal with the interactions with managers and various team members to plan, organize, direct (command), communicate, control, and team
build. Appendix 2 delineates some of the processes of management. The process for systems engineering (managed by the chief systems engineer or the
systems engineering manager) follows the systems engineering process
model. Integration is concerned with both kinds of processes—that for managing the project and for developing and integrating the product or service.
An adequate general reference to project management is periodically
updated and released by the Project Management Institute, Inc., an earlier
version of which is referenced (Project Management Institute 1996).
Processes as Intellectual Property
Processes can be turned into intellectual property (intellectual object) through
cognitive thinking and procedures that result in the patent process. Process
patents are recognized as valuable when reduced to an application and
granted. In that way, processes become objects. Intellectual objects can
become processes and be representative of the value embodied in the intellectual property. Intellectual objects are recognized as valuable when put into
use. Physical objects are valuable due to their intrinsic properties as well as
their uses and convertibility into other objects. The concept of converting one
object into another object through various mechanisms results in EMMI, a
EMMI that change with the conversion of objects. This conversion of objects
and the resultant changes in EMMI is both a social phenomenon and a means
of interaction and integration. Another way of thinking about objects and
processes is to recognize that EMMI derived from objects are inputs to objects
that enable procedures and procedures result in EMMI to objects; further,
objects are the result of procedures and procedures are the outputs of objects.
By these we recognize that objects are objectively determined while processes are subjectively determined. Therefore, the distinction between processes and objects is essentially the distinction between the subjective
domain and the objective domain. Both domains can be construed as social,
or physical, or other means of categorizing, but significantly, subjective
and objective considerations are the superclassifications for integration. We