System Integration

Dedicated to the dissemination of System Integration information

Design Patterns or Principles

The customer can very often stipulate that certain design patterns or principles be applied to the system.  This could be because your system needs to fit into the customers system (one mans system is another mans sub-system) or it could be because the customers support structure, debug, upgrades etc, relies on a certain set of design principles.

 

The above is particularly apparent with systems that are very much software based, i.e. a large part of the cost of the system is software related. 

 

If the suppliers system is going to be part of a larger system (one mans system is another mans sub-system) the customer usually stipulates the design principles and guidelines, e.g. common components, open architectures etc, that shall be used, if they didn’t the System Integration (S.I.) of the complete system would be very difficult.  This means that close, and often complex, customer - supplier relationships are forged.

 

This means that for the S.I. of the system and sub-system to work a close and trusting relationship needs to be formed between the customer and supplier, S.I. will only work if the customer/supplier communication channel is efficient and works well.

 

This is an example of how ‘Systems Engineering’ principles need to be applied, the practical as well as the technical needs to thought about and ‘designed’.