Systems Engineering for the Digital Age

Chapter 8Digital Engineering Implications on Decision‐Making Processes

Samuel Kovacic¹, Mustafa Canan², Jiang Li³, and Andres Sousa‐Poza¹

¹ Engineering Management/System Engineering, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

² Information Sciences Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA

³ Electrical Computer Engineering, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

Introduction

Reliability‐centered maintenance (RCM) is an organizational strategy that optimizes the maintenance program of a company. RCM adopts the holistic paradigm of the system engineer to ensure maintenance tasks are performed in an efficient, cost‐effective, reliable, and safe manner. Organizations are actively employing digital engineering techniques to transform engineering practice within their maintenance divisions. Digital engineering (DE) provides a unique opportunity for system resilience; its probative nature providing the ability to holistically interpret a problem domain over time to aide in the maintenance of a system can be considered a critical component to pursuing RCM and value creation of the supporting decision process.

Define Problem

The same technology that is advancing organizations into the digital world has introduced a higher level of complexity that confounds decisions. Complex and fragmented processes and data leads to challenges in the decision process. In today's digitally savvy domain the decision environment must be capable of consuming digital data for analytics, ...