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The capstone project, in most undergraduate engineering programs is the final phase of an academic career. It allows students to take knowledge acquired through the program and apply it to an innovative industry or research project. A well designed senior project affords the student the opportunity to demonstrate the skills and to model the behaviour, which are inherent in the education goals of the program. Most capstone projects focus on technical skills but soft skills oftentimes are not built into the experience. During the past three years we have observed that a significant amount of Sr. Design teams in our Electrical Engineering (EE) department do not complete the projects in a timely manner. We find that lack of technical knowledge is rarely the cause; more often the causes include lack of communication skills, lack of experience in organizing work in a team environment, and a bias towards focusing on the device level at the expense of having a clear, high level end-to-end view of the project. This paper describes our efforts to address these gaps through the incorporation of Systems Engineering disciplines into our undergraduate capstone course in EE and our results so far; thus, leading to more qualitative, competitive and successful projects.

We are living in a global service economy in which services now make up more than 78% of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This growth in Service has also become a global phenomenon and this has brought much needed attention to Service Science and Service Systems Engineering (SSE). As part of these efforts, this paper proposes the enhancement of existing architectural frameworks for Service Systems. We readily concede that IT is at the heart of Service Systems but we argue existing frameworks need to be expanded to address service systems governance and insertion of technology breakthroughs. A modified NIST framework is illustrated, that includes an Enterprise/Service Management plane to analyze energy Smart Grids as an end-to-end service provider. We also realized the need for integration of tools for the real-time dynamic analysis of ever-changing requirements within a Service System. This concept is illustrated in the form of an internet manufacturing laboratory where design, fabrication, IT, and other supporting tools are integrated to rapidly fabricate complex 3D prototype models. Finally, we discuss issues which need to be addressed for the creation of curricula and professional degree programs in Service Systems Engineering at the graduate level. As a result, we propose a plan for including a Service Systems Engineering specialization track within traditional Systems Engineering programs.