Managing Performance Complexity and Manpower Sustainability with Systems Engineering

Researchers and engineers are finding themselves in a dilemma where supply is not meeting demand with an exponential growing population and complex systems putting more demands on power systems. The demand and supply of natural resources used to generate, transmit, and consume the power make the challenge for the human race even more complex. This research paper provides a motivation and quest for sustainable human factors and ergonomics (HF/E), specifically human performance elements in complex systems design and development. The advancements achieved in complex systems engineering show that the application of sustainable HF/E can lead to highly sophisticated and useable applications to ensure sustainability of limited resources such as energy and clean water. The integration of HF/E and Human-Centered design concepts with systems engineering proves critical for building complex systems and to support meeting the needs for future workforce skills and capabilities.