System Integration

Dedicated to the dissemination of System Integration information

Quite often sub-contractors will be needed to supply, or design, specialist parts of a system, the sub-contractors possess some specialist knowledge or skill which you don’t.

 

Once a sub-contractor has been contracted you lose some control over the partitioning of a system, you therefore lose some control over the System Integration (S.I.) of that system. 

 

You lose scheduling control in that an outside company, over which your control is limited, is performing a part of your job and also you lose some technical control as your company does not possess the same amount  of technical knowledge as the sub-contractor, you need to accept what they say.

 

You have now also brought an element from the far-world into your near-world, i.e. brought another source of turbulence into your ‘system’ (or world).  Your near-world becomes bigger and therefore less predictable.

 

You are also forced to accept a certain partitioning of your system, if the design of your system is under your complete control you have at least have an element of flexibility, some ability to change things as the design of the system matures, this may be necessary for a whole host of reasons.  If you sub-contract you lose some control and flexibility, whereas before you had 100% control you now have something less than 100% control.

 

You also need to think about information sharing, how the sharing of information affects you, how sharing of information with the sub-contractor, which is inevitable, affects S.I.

 

Sub-Contractors and System Integration