Original Date: 01/23/1995
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

In 1993, Sandia initiated a Systems Engineering (SE) upgrade effort to improve the skills of the systems engineers and to incorporate new ideas and advances from recent developments in the SE field. The SE process is a comprehensive, disciplined, problem-solving process used to transform customer needs into a life-cycle, balanced, integrated system solution. It provides a framework from which requirements analysis, functional analysis, functional decomposition and allocation, synthesis, verification and validation, risk analysis, and trade studies can be conducted. It also controls the engineering effort, including project planning and project management activities. The SE effort is tailored for each customer and project to provide the best process for the requirements and problems being worked.

Sandia's SE process is effected using a four-team approach including Process (develop and document "typical" SE process), Education (provide SE training and information to staff personnel), Tools (create an effective System Engineering environment), and Industry/University (team with industry/universities to improve SE skills).

Sandia expects to benefit by meeting customer requirements on time and within budget by creating fewer false starts from working the wrong problem, fewer "throwing-over-the-wall" activities by considering life cycle needs earlier, and enhanced traceability of what was done and why.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.