Operational Analysis and Mission Engineering: A strategy and framework to analyze any industrial ecosystem.

Abstract

The field of system engineering builds on the principles of system architecture, system engineering, and product management while attempting to balance the sociotechnical and socioeconomic impacts. Today's industries face the ever-increasing business dynamics of changing technologies, competition, and regulations that affect their products, services, and processes. Yet, they all continue spending large sums of money on R&D during and after product launch. These products and services must meet critical financial, sales, and customer targets. The situation has become dire within all industries as they attempt to find the answers to the questions by applying different Product Delivery Processes like stage gate, spiral, waterfall, AGILE, Scaled AGILE, etc.

Through our research looking at the enterprise strategy and its development, enterprises aren’t looking at it from and system thinking perspective. This thesis suggests that operational analysis, mission engineering, mission architecture, technology road mapping, portfolio management, product development, order fulfillment, and lifecycle management, we have only focused on the product development perspective without other elements previously mentioned, for the most part, have been siloed.

So, this thesis will explore if system design and management principles and practices are applied upfront in the strategy development process to identify key opportunities within the industrial ecosystem in which the enterprise resides has the potential to allow the product delivery process to reduce the risk of not meeting the enterprise's financial, sales, and customer targets.

We will explore the potential to apply operational analysis and mission engineering within the context of the industrial ecosystem in the enterprise resides to identify opportunities and their subsequent missions and relationships. It will also explore how, through operational analysis and mission engineering; we can further understand the socioeconomic and sociotechnical ramifications providing additional inputs when developing the enterprise strategy.

Through this framework, these building blocks will be critical to the enterprise strategy reducing the risk to the outcomes of any product delivery process.

Through this understanding, we can clarify how the enterprise sits in the ecosystem and identify our relationship to ensure our strategy and vision meet or exceed our business and customer needs. Through this approach, we also believe that enterprise efficiency, effectiveness, and market penetration enable sustainable growth while embracing technology and minimizing the socioeconomic impact on society.

We have limited the scope within this thesis to an enterprise strategy currently. Future research must apply the framework and structure proposed within the thesis. It can provide an avenue into a more comprehensive understanding of the enterprise's economic benefits and the socioeconomic and sociotechnical impacts as the demands of the 21st century will challenge us as professionals.