Model Based Systems Engineering: Fundamentals and Methods

2

Technological Systems

2.1. Introduction

In this chapter, we will present technological systems as concrete objects with general characteristics of all concrete systems, as well as characteristics that are specific to them. Technological systems will be characterized as human creations, designed and developed on the basis of a usefulness (i.e. not for themselves but with an external purpose) and available scientific and technical knowledge. This will allow us to introduce, alongside general concepts of property, behavior and state, specific concepts of technological systems such as function, concomitant effect, mode, error, fault and failure that are necessary to define engineering processes of technological systems.

2.2. Definition of technological systems

The standard ISO 15288 [ISO 05] defines the systems of interest as systems produced by humans, created and used to provide services in defined environments to benefit its users and other stakeholders. This definition states that systems with which systems engineering is concerned are artificial systems, designed and produced by humans. For this reason, these are systems orientated toward a determined objective (to provide services in defined environments to benefit its users and other involved stakeholders¹). This, therefore, introduces two important differences compared with natural systems, whose genesis and dynamics are linked to the evolution of the universe and to which it is impossible to assign an aim (“no plastic brain, ...