Lean Systems Engineering: Research Initiatives in Support of a New Paradigm

Systems Engineering (SE) has become increasingly important as the complexity and interconnectedness of systems continues to grow, but there remains a great deal of uncertainty as to how and when systems engineering can most effectively and efficiently add value throughout a program’s lifecycle. Lean Thinking (Lean) is the dynamic, knowledge driven and customer-focused process through which all people in a defined enterprise work continuously to eliminate waste and to create value. SE and Lean have overlaps and differences, but both represent processes that evolved over time with the common goal of delivering product or system lifecycle value to the customer. SE has emphasized technical performance and risk management of large, integrated complex systems. Lean has emphasized waste minimization and flexibility in the production of high quality affordable products with short development and production lead times. With SE and Lean sharing a common goal, some suitable combination of the two could possibly lead to a superior systems engineering process, herein called Lean Systems Engineering. This paper will highlight recently completed and ongoing research activities at the Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI) Consortium research center at MIT that point towards an emerging lean systems engineering paradigm, and will offer thoughts on additional possibilities for research directions, including extensions to Systems of Systems.