Within the Systems Engineering field there is a general lean towards the lifecycles of systems as products or services. Within the SEIC a group of researchers considered the enterprise as a system itself and how improvements could be made not only in business terms but also more within the organisational or human aspects. A portfolio of three research projects were undertaken by Loughborough University at the SEIC between 2004 and 2006. This portfolio included the Virtual Organisational Rig for Testing and Investigating Company Structures (VORTICS), Good Engineering Governance (GEG), and Managing Tacit Knowledge in Design Reviews (MTKn) projects. The projects were funded through the EPSRC with sponsorship from BAE SYSTEMS. Figure 1 shows how the different projects relate to each other.

Figure 1: Organisational Systems Project Contexts

VORTICS

The main aims of the VORTICS project were to create the building blocks of a coherent enterprise modelling capability, and to derive a detailed user requirements and high level technical specification for a test rig to model organisations. This would be done through: o Identifying gaps in current enterprise modelling capability and determine a set of requirements for a comprehensive set of integrated models. o Using existing models and new models of enterprise characteristics provide a usable and useful portfolio of enterprise modelling technology that fulfil fill the gaps in modelling capability. o Integrating these gap models with current enterprise models within a given operational scenario o Developing a detailed requirements specification and high-level technical architecture for the VORTICS system. Within the work undertaken in the VORTICS project a number of soft enterprise characteristics were identified as gaps in current enterprise modelling capability. Models/tools for investigating Role Interactions, Enterprise Strategy, Competency, Cultural Values and Decision Making Systems were developed. These new models were evaluated and refined through three case study scenarios (Typhoon Engineering, DSTL Smart Acquisition and SEIC Research) with analyses and recommendations for change. A UML class diagram model of the enterprise system was created that integrated more traditional forms of enterprise modelling (e.g. process, information, resource) with these new soft enterprise characteristic models. Figure 2 shows (non-exhaustively) the types of objects that can be modelled within an enterprise.

Figure 2 :Enterprise Modelling System

Good Engineering Governance (GEG)

Engineering governance is defined as “a functional governance frame work which is a sub section of corporate governance, it is the whole set of legal, cultural, and institutional arrangements that determine what Engineering functions can do, who controls them, how that control is exercised, monitoring the performance in terms of cost and quality, and identifies the risks and return from the activities that they undertake."(Hassan, et. al., 2006) As engineering products are becoming more complex, organisations need greater integration and control in order to meet the customer's requirements. Without governance in these organisations it is difficult to have a central and cohesive view of activities. The main aims of the GEG project were to; o investigate and understand the sponsor company's governance context specific to the engineering environment; its processes, difficulties, goals, and timescales for achieving these goals. o identify 'best practice' for sponsor company, based on the findings, coupled with published best practice as reported by other organisations. o develop a road-map, with supporting documentation, to tailor and instantiate this 'best practice' within the sponsor company. For a commercial business, governance must address four aspects: o Meeting legal requirements for health & safety, probity, etc. o Ensuring the development, at acceptable risk, of competitive offerings for its customers. o Ensuring the offerings are to specification. o Delivering the offering to the customer to the business benefit of the enterprise. Figure 3 below shows these four interacting aspects within the context of engineering governance being a subset of corporate governance.

Figure 3: Corporate Governance and Layered Model

Managing Tacit Knowledge in Design Reviews (MTKn)

The main aim of the MTKn project was to increase the effectiveness/efficiency of the design review process via improved management of tacit knowledge through; o improvement the decision making process among reviewers o supplementing of training course mechanisms e.g. informal networks for expertise exchange, advice, mentoring & shadowing etc. o provision of DR team profiles and selection criteria / processes o optimisation of potential for identification / closure of 'known unknowns' and 'unknown unknowns' o capture, share and reuse of lessons learnt across DRs o measurement of the effectiveness of current review practice and actors The researchers observed within the various activities undertaken as part of design reviews within Air Systems. The project yielded three key deliverables these being: 1. A Baseline Design Review Process that represents and maps out design review processes, the necessary activities and sequence of events that are involved; it is an ideal viewpoint and can be tailored in a modular fashion to suit specific projects. It is a formalised view based on experience gained across a number of projects and contains core activities along with support activities in an integrated way. 2. Recommendations for resourcing of the Design Review Process, which includes role definitions, role interactions, role boundaries (authority, responsibility, autonomy), knowledge profiles and selection criteria. 3. Improved operation of DRP by provision of metrics (efficiency & expertise), training recommendations and methods for managing tacit knowledge more efficiently.

Figure 4: Flow of Tacit Knowledge in Design Reviews