The Nature of Industrial and Systems Engineering Principles and how to Evolve them to Enhance our Transdisciplinary Capability

Abstract

Industrial and systems engineering integrates engineering principles and methods with mathematics, physics, and sociology to design, improve, and install integrated systems where people are present. This has resulted in numerous guiding propositions such as heuristics, principles, conventions, and perspectives that guide our actions when intervening in complex systems. However, the maturity and applicability of these guiding propositions are uneven and even unclear. Amid the 5th Industrial Revolution, where we are moving past a focus on full automation into the integration and collaboration between humans and intelligent systems, gaining insight into the maturity of our guiding propositions is imperative. In this paper, we introduce a framework, developed by INCOSE’s Bridge Team, that illustrates the origin and evolution of all guiding propositions. The evolution process is valuable to ISEs as it will guide us in determining when and how to evolve our guiding propositions, thus enhancing the transdisciplinary nature of ISE.