Over the last year, during several webinars and in-person events, I've spoken about the idea of systems-based thinking, which incorporates the ideas of strategic thought in the form of focus (“saying no”) and identifying and executing on coherent actions. In many ways, systems thinking (a.k.a. strategy) incorporates pattern identification. I've written quite a bit about what pattern identification can look like from a gaming perspective. In this article, we will explore what systems thinking looks like when applied to engineering.
I want to note that I think for engineers, it is difficult to develop systems-level thinking. Speaking from experience, our entire education and professional lives as engineers have been spent on focusing on details and being task-focused. What that leads to, unfortunately, is decisions that only look at parts rather than the whole. At the 2021 ASPE Technical Symposium and in a previous column, I shared a story from my childhood about building the best deck, not just having the best cards. This plays itself out in engineering though, too. But rather than talking about plumbing systems, I want to review a non-construction industry engineering example.