Introduction to the Special Issue on the Application of Artificial Intelligence Techniques to Systems Engineering

vvnen we nrsr aeciaeo 10 PU1 iogewer me speciai issue you are now holding, we felt that it would fill a gaping hole in the area of applications of artificial intelligence (AI). After all, while Al has been applied to specific problems in design, manufacturing, and production, little attention had been paid to systems engineering and to its various parts. At the same time, we feared that the existence of this research gap might make it difficult to put together a special issue. We were wrong: there is a substantial research community that is actively involved in researching issues of Al in systems engineering, and tackling some of the large problems in the field. As a result, we had an excellent collection of papers from which to choose the contents of this special issue, and we have achieved to cover many of the facets of systems engineering. Systems engineering is the process that is responsible for the orderly development of complex, human-made systems. It encompasses the entire life cycle of a product, from the initial need perception, to requirements formulation, partitioning, design, testing and integration of subsystems, system testing, documentation, fielding, maintenance, system enhancements, and requirements modification. Because of its complexity, its reliance on human expertise, and its information intensive nature, systems engineering can greatly benefit from artificial intelligence. The six papers in this special issue describe applications of Al techniques in managing and analyzing systems-level requirements, enabling traceability of systems-level activities, performing concurrent systems synthesis, and addressing actual production problems. The papers by Black and by Yen, Liu, and Teh, address the major problem of managing and analyzing system requirements. The paper by Black describes an intelligent system developed by General Electric’s Corporate R&D Center that supports the earliest phase of systems engineering, namely the extraction and organization of cus-