Systems Engineering

Systems Engineering (SE) described an inter-disciplinary approach to develop and realise complex technical systems (products). The focus was on the one hand to incorporate customer requirements early in the development cycle and on the other hand, to perform design synthesis and system verification as early and iteratively as possible. A system was considered as a combination of sub-systems, which are interrelated. Ideally, SE considers both technical and socio-economic needs in all phases of the life cycle (design, test, production, operation and recycling).

The project addresses three interrelated and coherent research objectives:

- Development of training content (professional scientific and didactic framework) for the subject area systems engineering within the engineering design education.

- The implementation and requirement-specific adaptation and provision of appropriate IT tools and methodological tools in the field of systems engineering education within the engineering design exercises.

- The deployment of the developed methods using the implemented IT tools as a concrete pilot application example (school spanning project work) including empirical studies on the functionality and acceptance.

The students of the participating vocational schools were directly involved in the research process in all above mentioned stages. Interfaces were set up and configured according to the requirements of the schools’ educational processes. These requirements were specified (in the context of group discussions), specimen or templates for the description of subsystems or components were developed and verified. The students also played an important role within the empirical studies on the effectiveness of IT system support.