Derek Hitchins: Engine

“System engineering is the art and science of creating effective systems, using whole system, whole life principles.”

Derek Hitchins

Derek Hitchins (1995) cited in: Herbert Negele (2000) Systems engineering--a key to competitive advantage for all industries. p,166

Life , Art , Science

“The Holy Grail of systems engineering, a generic systems methodology has been the subject of the author’s ongoing research for over 20 years.”

Derek Hitchins

Derek K Hitchins (2005) Systems Methodology http://sse.stevens.edu/fileadmin/cser/2005/papers/10.pdf

“The motives for conceiving modern systems engineering are to be found, at least in part, in past disasters. Arthur D. Hall III [1989] cites: the chemical plant leakage in Bhopal (1986); the explosion of the NASA Challenger space shuttle (1986) and the Apollo fire (1967); the sinking of the Titanic (1912); the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl (1986) and the disaster at Three Mile Island power plant (1979). He cites, too, the capture of markets by Japan from the U. S., the decline in US productivity and the failure of the US secondary school system. He identifies the millions of people dying of starvation every year while other nations stockpile surplus food, medical disasters such as heart disease, while governments subsidize grains used to produce high cholesterol meat, milk and eggs; and many more. One implication is clear: systems engineering faces challenges well beyond the sphere of engineering.”

Derek Hitchins

Source: Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management (2003), p. 75-76

People , Disease , School , Food

“Architecture is defined as the art and science of creating buildings. Systems engineering may be similarly defined as the art and science of creating systems.”

Derek Hitchins

Source: Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management (2003), p. 309; partly cited in: Kurt A. Richardson, Wendy J. Gregory, Gerald Midgley (2006) Systems Thinking and Complexity Science. p. 39

Art , Science

“Hard systems viewpoints are basically those held by designers and engineers who are trying to create systems to meet an understood need in an effective and economic manner. Those in the soft camp caricature the approach as head-down, concerned with optimization, obsessed with quantitative metrics and highly pragmatic. So much so, in fact, that the term system thinking has been purloined by the soft camp as though they alone thought! The soft camp use the term engineer’s philosophy, not too endearingly, to describe the hard approach, in which the requirement is stated by a customer and the engineer satisfies the requirement without question.”

Derek Hitchins

Source: Putting systems to work (1992), p. 6; as cited in: Stuart Anderson (2006) "Heterogeneous Modelling of Evolution for Socio-technical Systems"

Optimism , Question , Thinking