4.6.5 Towards an Improved Understanding of Humans as the Components that Implement Systems Engineering

Successful systems are developed from a good understanding of two things: the features and functions desired by the customers, and the features and behaviour of the available components. A firm developing a complex technical system is also a complex technical system in itself, so the same two things need to be understood about the organisation. Much research on systems engineering focus on defining the features and functions of the organisation, but less attention has been given to the prime component used for implementing it: the human being. In this paper, an initial attempt is made at describing some of the issues involved, from a mainly philosophical perspective.