Page 302 - Mechanical Engineers' Handbook (Volume 2)

5 System Design 293

6. To identify barriers to successful implementation of the final design product
7. To provide for ‘‘maintenance’’ of the system

5.4 Leadership Requirements for Design

The actual use, as contrasted with potential usefulness, of a system is directly dependent on
the value that the user group of stakeholders associates with use of the system and the
resulting process in an operational environment. This in turn is dependent, in part, on how
well the system satisfies performance objectives and on how well it is able to cope with one
or more of the pathologies or pitfalls of planning, design, and/or decision making under
potentially stressful operational environment conditions.
Quality planning, design, and decision support are dependent on the ability to obtain
relatively complete identification of pertinent factors that influence plans, designs, and de-
cisions. The careful, comprehensive formulation of issues and associated requirements for
issue resolution will lead to identification of pertinent critical factors for system design. These
factors are ideally illuminated in a relatively easy-to-understand fashion that facilitates the
interpretation necessary to evaluate and subsequently select plans, designs, and decisions for
implementation. Success in this is, however, strongly dependent on adroitness in use of the
system. It is generally not fully meaningful to talk only of an algorithm or even a complete
system—which is, typically, a piece of hardware and software but which may well be a
carefully written set of protocols and procedures—as useful by itself. It is meaningful to
talk of a particular systemic process as being useful. This process involves the interaction
of a methodology with systems management at the cognitive process or human judgment
level. A systemic process depends on the system, the operational environment, and leadership
associated with use of the system. A process involves design integration of a methodology
with the behavioral concerns of human cognitive judgment in an operational environment.
Operational evaluation of a systemic process that involves human interaction, such as
an integrated manufacturing complex, appears the only realistic way to extract truly mean-
ingful information concerning process effectiveness of a given system design. This must
necessarily include leadership and training requirements to use the system. There are nec-
essary trade-offs associated with leadership and training for using a system and these are
addressed in operational evaluation.

5.5 System Evaluation

Previous sections have described a framework for a general system design procedure. They
have indicated the role of evaluation in this process. Successful evaluation, especially op-
erational evaluation, is strongly dependent on explicit development of a plan for evaluation
developed prior to, and perhaps modified and improved during the course of, an actual
evaluation. This section will concern itself with development of a methodological framework
for system evaluation, especially for operational evaluation of systemic processes for plan-
ning, design, and decision support.

Evaluation Methodology and Evaluation Criteria
Objectives for evaluation of a system concern the following:
1. Identification of a methodology for operational evaluation
2. Establishing criteria on which the success of the system may be judged