Question

write a critical review on this paper "THE INFLUENCE OF ARCHITECTURE IN ENGINEERING SYSTEMS" Engineering System Monograph

ENGINEERING SYSTEMS MONOGRAPH

The ESD Architecture Committee Edward Crawley, Olivier de Weck, Steven Eppinger, Christopher Magee, Joel Moses, Warren Seering, Joel Schindall, David Wallace, Daniel Whitney (Chair)

THE INFLUENCE OF ARCHITECTURE IN ENGINEERING SYSTEMS

The ESD Architecture Committee Edward Crawley, Olivier de Weck, Steven Eppinger, Christopher Magee, Joel Moses, Warren Seering, Joel Schindall, David Wallace, Daniel Whitney (Chair)

ABSTRACT

The field of Engineering Systems is distinguished from traditional engineering design in part by the issues it brings to the top. Engineering Systems focuses on abstractions like architecture and complexity, and defines system boundaries very broadly. It also seeks to apply these concepts to the process of creating systems. This paper summarizes the role and influence of architecture in complex engineering systems. Using the research literature and examples, this paper defines architecture, argues for its importance as a determinant of system behavior, and reviews its ability to help us understand and manage the design, operation, and behaviors of complex engineering systems.

A. INTRODUCTION

Typical engineering design education focuses on specific aspects of design, such as the technical behavior of a set of elements interconnected in a certain way. By contrast, Engineering Systems focuses on a number of abstract concepts first because they provide a general framework for guiding the development of many diverse kinds of systems, so that these systems will provide the desired functions in the desired ways. Among these abstract concepts is that of system architecture. In this paper, we explore this concept and provide a number of ways of appreciating system architecture

Answer 1

The architecture is the form of the system and is the dominant factor in its behavior. In some cases the function can be deduced by inspecting the form while in others (for example, software), the form conveys nothing about the function.Systems have behaviors that no subsets of their elements have. These behaviors are products of the interactions between the elements. They may be anticipated and designed in, or they may be unanticipated, in which case they are called emergent. Both anticipated and emergent properties may be desirable or undesirable. Emergent properties, desirable and undesirable, exist because we do not understand the system or its interactions with its context completely. To the extent that emergent behavior is caused by unpredictable factors such as human agency, future changes to the system, or the inability to model every possible system state, it may never be possible to prove that a given architecture has or does not have a particular behavior. The aim of system design, and of architectural design within system design, is to obtain the desired behaviors (functions plus ilities) while suppressing undesirable behaviors. The system