Complex,
Inventive, Strategic Systems (CISS) -
A Lifecycle Framework
using ALVIS thinking
Navneet Bhushan
Crafitti Consulting Pvt Ltd, (www.crafitti.com)
Emails: navneet.bhushan@crafitti.com,
Abstract
We define a new class of systems and products named Complex
Inventive Strategic Systems (CISS). The challenges of discovering, defining,
describing, designing, developing, deploying, and deducing (7Ds) the CISS require a complete relook of their
lifecycle. These systems are characterized by substantial decentralization, higher
embedded/ambient intelligence, inherently conflicting, unknowable and diverse needs/requirements,
continuous evolution/deployment, heterogeneous, inconsistent, and changing
elements, erosion of people/system boundary, regular failures and new paradigms
for acquisition and policy. Besides the advent of cyber-physical systems,
increasing intelligence of technical systems, the massive scale of these
systems coupled with strategic nature of many of these systems leads to
unprecedented challenges. Today the largest systems being conceived are what in
the military parlance are called System of Systems (SoS) and Ultra Large Scale
Systems (ULSS). These cutting-edge systems are characterized by operational and
managerial independence of elements, evolutionary development, emergent
behavior and geographic distribution. Further their life cycle is exponentially
impacted and the scale, inventiveness and strategic nature of these systems and
products require completely new approaches.
Key aspects for 7Ds of CISS
lifecycle i.e., Value, Inventiveness, Human Interaction, Computational
Emergence, multi-level Design, Computational Engineering, Adaptive System
Infrastructure, Adaptable and Predictable System Quality, Policy, Acquisition
and Management are explained. Five thinking dimensions proposed for CISS are Analytical,
Logical, Value, Inventive, and Systems thinking (ALVIS). These thinking
dimensions need to play a much larger part in an integrated manner than the
current purely analogical thinking. We describe few case studies in ALVIS
thinking and describe ALVIS thinking framework for 7Ds of CISS.
Keywords:
Ultra Large Scale Systems, Value Thinking, Systems Thinking, Inventive Thinking,
Product Life Cycle, Modeling, TRIZ, AHP, Design Structure Matrix, Set-Based
Concurrent Engineering, ALVIS thinking, Complex Inventive Strategic Systems
(CISS).
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