The Social Life of Information: Brown, J.S., & Duguid, P. (2000). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing. ISBN 0-87584-762-5. 320 pages.

This paper reviews the state of the art on the resilience of complex systems by embracing different research areas and using bibliometric tools. The aim is to identify the main intellectual communities and leading scholars and to synthesize key knowledge of each research area. We also carry out a comparison across the research areas, aimed at analyzing how resilience is approached in any field, how the topic evolved starting from the ecological field of study, and the level of cross-fertilization among domains. Our analysis shows that resilience of complex systems is a multidisciplinary concept, which is particularly important in the fields of environmental science, ecology, and engineering. Areas of recent and increasing interest are also operation research, management science, business, and computer science. Except for environmental science and ecology, research is fragmented and carried out by isolated research groups. Integration is not only limited inside each field but also between research areas. In particular, we trace the citation links between different research areas and find a very limited number, revealing a scarce cross-fertilization among domains. We conclude by providing some directions for future research.

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Resilience of Complex Systems: State of the Art and Directions for Future Research

Samsung recently introduced a new smartphone display with increased breaking resistance, which will probably be relevant for future cars as well. This example shows that subsystems, in general artefacts from former development processes can be relevant for subsequent projects. Their integration has to be planned, i.a. even before the original product is in the market and across branches. The research on supporting methods requires a suitable description model for this phenomenon. Research in design reuse and PGE – product generation engineering addresses this only partially yet. Design reuse focuses on the informational aspect, PGE refers primarily to reference products. This contribution aims at closing this gap as a basis for future research. Two case studies from industry projects by the authors and an example from foresight and product planning show the role of artefacts from former development processes in running projects. It is described which artefacts are used as a reference, why they are used and when. Based on these findings the authors propose the term “reference system” to depict the whole set of artefacts, which serves as a basis for every product development project.

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The Reference System in the Model of PGE: Proposing a Generalized Description of Reference Products and their Interrelations

The ISO 9001:2015 standard released in September 2015 contains, for the first time, a specification for ‘organizational knowledge’ as a resource and during the following three years more than 1.1 m...

ISO 9001:2015: the evolution and convergence of quality management and knowledge management for competitive advantage

Infrastructure resilience curves: Performance measures and summary metrics

This paper presents results from a research project on the behavior of complex systems after they experience disruptive events that impact their performance. As systems become more complex, the probability increases that they will exhibit emergent behavior that could lead to system failures or widespread and prolonged service interruptions. A complex adaptive system CAS approach is used to conceptualize a complex network system that has been impacted by disruptions and perturbations. A combination of network analysis and agent-based modeling is used to measure the performance of the system as it responds to disruptive events and restoration efforts. This system-level behavior is an emergent property of the complex network and represents system resilience. Various resilience measures are used to quantify system resilience and assess the effectiveness of strategies system owners employ to restore the system. We illustrate our techniques by characterizing a critical infrastructure system network as a CAS, and applying an agent-based simulation with an adaptive algorithm.

Resilience in Complex Systems: An Agent-Based Approach

:This research article provides valuable insights for practicing engineering managers on improving a firm's performance by applying a knowledge management (KM) based approach to quality management (QM). Traditional quality management systems do not provide sufficient knowledge management and knowledge creation opportunities for manufacturing firms to stay competitive in today's fast paced, unpredictable, complex, and rapidly changing global business environment. The world's body of knowledge does not include a quality management strategy where KM is integrated in QM, and where the effectiveness of such a KM/QM strategy is determined through quantitative empirical research over a defined time frame, thus omitting important performance improvement opportunities for manufacturing firms. The objective in addressing this research topic is to present a KM/QM strategy and to demonstrate its effectiveness. Engineering management areas, such as knowledge management and quality management, are leveraged thr...

A Knowledge Management Based Approach to Quality Management for Large Manufacturing Organizations

Methodologies are required to model, evaluate, and analyze the resilience of system architectures at the conceptual design level to support needs evaluations, policy development, or study of social decisions. The primary objective of this paper was to develop a generalized resilience analysis model for the characterization of multistate engineered systems subject to disruptions to support system design selection during trade studies. Each design variant within the tradespace is modeled using continuous time Markov chains that simulate the transient response of each design variant subject to a user-defined disruption. The operating condition of the multistate system is characterized by a finite number of machine states. Each design variant's utility response is generated as a function of the system's machine state response to the disruption. Resilience capacities and capabilities are generated to populate trade studies. A case study consisting of an unmanned surface vessel provides a system theoretic approach to illustrate the concepts presented within this paper and demonstrates the ability of this methodology to aid decision maker's selection of resilient system architectures. Use of an analytical framework serves as a unifying foundation for incorporating resilience behaviors of multistate engineered systems into early stage design considerations.

Toward Resilience as a Tradable Parameter During Conceptual Trade Studies

This article identifies the causes of engineering change propagation during the development and production phases of the product lifecycle using a statistical method applied to a large engineering ...

Causes of Engineering Change Propagation: An Analysis During Product Lifecycle

It is extensively acknowledged that Requirements Engineering (RE) has critical implication for overall success of program and project systems development. This research examines and presents a framework that demonstrates how System Usability can be measured to improve decision-making during RE phases as valuable input to feed-follow-on Systems Engineering (SE) activities throughout system development life cycle stages. This paper discusses research for a systematic approach in developing a decision framework based upon four major requirement specification factors: requirement text quality, complexity, completeness and capacity to identify system usability prior to being delivered into system operations per documented requirement specification. The objective of the research is to identify the utility of the defined stakeholder requirements during the earliest stages of system development to measure system usability prior to investing or allocating significant resources to deliver an end-system that satisfies customer expectations. The decision framework is a convergence of multiple fields of research that include requirements text analysis, quality attributes, problem complexity, and requirements metrics as input for decision analysis to assist researchers and practitioners with delivery of end-systems that meet the stakeholder expectations. The operational specification statements within requirement documentation will be analyzed to measure text quality attributes for metrics. The decision framework bridges the gap amongst the stakeholder and system engineer during RE phases to identify issues on the front of the systems engineering process to develop quality end-systems.

Andreas Garstenauer

Papers

Resilience in Complex Systems: An Agent-Based Approach

A Knowledge Management Based Approach to Quality Management for Large Manufacturing Organizations

Toward Resilience as a Tradable Parameter During Conceptual Trade Studies

Causes of Engineering Change Propagation: An Analysis During Product Lifecycle

Measuring System Usability during Requirement Engineering: Requirements Engineering