SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS AN INTRODUCTION

SOS,SoS,system of systems

SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS: AN INTRODUCTION OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY SCHOOLS OF ENGINEERING’S SIGNATURE AREA

William A. Crossley, Associate Professor

School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Purdue University

crossley@purdue.edu

INTRODUCTION

In August of 2002, the Schools of Engineering at Purdue University began an effort to identify “signature areas”1 as part of the commitment to reinforce the Schools’ standing as a preeminent academic engineering institution. The University administration has allocated 75 new faculty positions, above the current number of engineering faculty, to pursue highly relevant, multidisciplinary activities in discovery, learning and engagement. During the Spring 2003 semester, signature areas were identified based upon proposals submitted by engineering faculty members. The eight selected areas are: Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, Global Sustainable Industrial Systems, Information, Communication and Perception Technologies, Intelligent Infrastructure Systems, Nanotechnologies and Nanophotonics, Renewable Energy and Power Systems, Tissue and Cellular Engineering, and System of Systems. Academic planning, multidisciplinary collaborations, and faculty searches for these eight areas began during May of 2003.

This paper will present an introduction of the System of Systems Signature Area. This includes discussion about system of systems, an overview of the signature area – including the main research areas and current efforts, and finally an overview of three example problems that could be used as staring points for discussion and research into problem formulation and solution techniques for systems of systems. While the following discussion will rely upon aerospace and defense examples, because of the author’s familiarity in this domain, other non-aerospace-centric examples exist.

SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS

The idea of “system of systems” as an emerging and important multidisciplinary area for Purdue University’s Schools of Engineering arose as faculty members began to recognize significant changes in government and industry, particularly in the aerospace and defense areas. Major aerospace and defense manufacturers, including (but not limited to) Boeing,2 Lockheed-Martin,3 Northrop-Grumman,4 Raytheon,5 and BAE Systems6 all include some version of “large-scale systems integration” as a key part of their business strategies and, in some cases, these companies have established entire business units dedicated to systems integration activities.

One reason for this new emphasis on large-scale systems is that the customers of these companies – notably the Department of Defense – have changed their approach to acquisition. These customers now want solutions to provide a set of capabilities, not a single specific vehicle or system to meet an exact set of specifications. This illuminates two important contexts for discussing large-scale systems.

CURRENT CONTEXT: AEROSPACE VEHICLE AS A LARGE-SCALE SYSTEM

Commercial aircraft (like the Boeing 737-800

in Figure 1), military aircraft, missiles, spacecraft,

and launch vehicles are commonly used as

illustrative examples of large-scale systems.

These vehicles consist of a multitude of

subsystems and components that must be

integrated into a complex large-scale system. The

constituent components and subsystems number

on the order of hundreds of thousands to millions;

design textbooks often cite the number of parts in

a commercial transport aircraft (4 to 5 million) to

emphasize the complexity of these systems.7 The

interaction among the various components and subsystems in an aerospace vehicle are complex Figure 1 The Boeing 737-800 commercial transport

aircraft, a large-scale system.

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