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Systems thinking is an approach to reasoning and treatment of real-world problems based on the fundamental notion of ‘system.’ System here refers to a purposeful assembly of components. Thus, systems thinking is aimed at understanding relationships between components and their overall impact on system outcomes (i.e., intended and unintended) and how a system similarly fits in the broader context of its environment. There are currently several distinct flavors of systems thinking, both in practice and scholarship; most notably in the disciplines of systems science, systems engineering, and systems dynamics. Each of these, while similar in purpose, has a distinct history and a rich set of methods and tools for various application contexts. The WPI Systems Thinking Colloquium held on 2 October 2019 was aimed at exploring the diversity of perspectives on systems thinking from these disciplines. The colloquium brought together world-renowned experts from both industry and academia to share insights from their research and practice. This paper offers a compilation of summaries of the presentations given.

Developing human centered systems across multiple design and development teams requires a common framework to ensure seamless transition of models between collaborators. It is not sufficient to simply exchange data that is syntactically correct, it is also important to ensure that the information exchanged has shared meaning among team members. A current design project that included human architecting, human performance modeling and system engineering teams provided the foundation for a level of compatibility framework for Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) using the System Modeling Language (SysML). This framework provides descriptions of four different levels of model maturity that can be used for collaborative development. At each stage, the benefits of the model are described as well as its limitations. The Levels of SysML Compatibility can be used to integrate the Human Views, Soldier System library models and IMPRINT simulations to produce a comprehensive human system modeling approach.

The Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) is a key tool used by the United States engineering and acquisition communities. The DoDAF provides a method to organize system engineering information into a series of architecture products, and groups them into different “views” of the system. These viewpoints represent traditional perspectives of system architecture data, such as operations or technologies. With a new release of the DoDAF, it is now possible to create viewpoints that extend the system architecture to include new types of data such as a Human Viewpoint, which includes information about the human component of the system. This “Non Legacy” viewpoint can be used to augment the standard sets of architectural products with human-centered information important to the system description. However, the methodology to include new viewpoints in the DoDAF is not defined. While the DoDAF specification indicates that new data elements can be included in unique architecture products, there is no guidance on how to instantiate these representations while adhering to the DoDAF Meta Model (DM2) data schema. The focus of this research effort was to develop a methodology to implement the Human Viewpoint by extending the DM2 constructs while preserving the integrity of the overall architecture. The proposed methodology includes augmenting the underlying data schema, identifying the format to render the output models, ensuring that the additional views remains linked to the overall architecture, and evaluating the implications of the additional viewpoint. A flexible architecting tool, the Architex Decision Support Toolset, was used as an architecture test-bed to evaluate the feasibility of implementing Non Legacy viewpoints using the prescribed process. The outcome of this work can be extended to provide a general methodology for including other Non Legacy viewpoints with the DoDAF architecture framework.

In this modern age of manufacturing, dynamism in manufacturing calls for lower cost of production, faster delivery, higher quality and customer satisfaction. Therefore the need for instituting various appropriate techniques and strategies to streamline manufacturing processes has become paramount for managers. Bearing in mind this priority demands, techniques such as Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Total Quality Management (TQM), Just-In-Time Manufacturing (JIT) and Synchronous Manufacturing have gained popularity in the recent past. TPM as maintenance strategy is a comprehensive strategy, hence integrating it with TQM makes the approach more versatile and flexible. The objectives of both TPM and TQM are both geared towards enhancing the availability and the presentation of equipment continuously as a means of achieving the maximum effective performance, as well as ensuring that producing quality products become a hallmark. This paper seeks to evaluate the significance of implementing total productive maintenance (TPM) in a total quality management (TQM) environment in the maintenance function of manufacturing. The study establishes that integrating TPM and TQM strategically over a period of time can contribute to significant increases in the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) of machines thereby contributing towards realistic gains in productivity and manufacturing performance enhancements.

The Department of Defense Architectural Framework (DoDAF) is the DoD's mandated method to document system architectures. The current version of DoDAF i.e. v2.02 advocates a data-centric process focused on eliciting data to facilitate decision support. It prescribes a domain ontology i.e. the DoDAF Meta-Model (DM2) aimed at ensuring conformance and interoperability of architecture models. Although DoDAF currently does not prescribe or proscribe specific methodologies or tools, the mismatch between DoDAF's underlying modeling approach and mainstream methodologies and supporting technology in Systems Engineering (SE) has been alluded to in the literature [1-3]. This paper proposes a process for architecting of systems in line with the DoDAF, aimed at bridging this gap. Additionally it offers a discussion of supporting tools in this regard.

The Department of Defense Architecture Framework's (DoDAF) [1]data-centric development paradigm offers the potential for depth in architecture data and flexibility in presentation styles aimed at decision support. However the architecture development methodology advocated in versions 2.0 and upwards is a significant shift in approach, compared to prior versions. The framework specification, supporting literature and exemplar implementations fail to offer enough detail on a number of pertinent issues, among them executable modeling and architecture analysis, and the technology or tooling requirements which will facilitate their implementation. As part of ongoing research efforts aimed at addressing this gap this paper offers an overview of the literature on architecture modeling methodologies specifically tailored to the DoDAF, and propose the Modeling and Simulation Systems Development Framework (MS-SDF) [2] as a coherent and comprehensive approach for modeling within the DoDAF.