Conceptualizing an Academic Teaching and Learning Laboratory for Systems Engineering

Format: Publikation

Autor: Karasek, O.; Arslanparcasi, Y.;

Erscheinungsjahr: 2023

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In an increasingly complex world of goods and services, as well as in the context of digitalization and Industry 4.0, previous product development for intelligent technical systems is reaching its limits. Due to shorter product life cycles, increasing complexity and a growing number of product variants, along with growing demands on the part of stakeholders, etc., new approaches to development are required (Czaja et al., 2017; Haberfellner et al., 2021).

However, the use of new development approaches, such as advanced systems engineering (ASE), is accompanied by far-reaching changes for the organization and all people involved. ASE combines methods for system consideration and for requirements management with AI-influenced engineering processes in which all relevant information – from the business idea to market success – is integrated into the development process across disciplines in order to efficiently design the development of complex cyber-physical systems (Dumitrescu et al., 2021). Such new development approaches require a redesign of work organization, as well as versatile competencies and skillsets going beyond classical engineering. Advanced soft skills and new work competencies such as communication, teamwork and agile work methods become more important for example through the introduction of flat hierarchies or cross-functional work structures.

Thus, new competencies and qualifications for future engineers are necessary for product development. Against this backdrop, the expansion of targeted competency management and higher education in the engineering sciences must adequately take these developments into account. This is because successful adaptation and transformation of companies in value creation is largely determined by their ability to build up the right competencies as well as to use existing competencies of employees and to develop them in a targeted manner (North et al., 2018).

In this paper we outline the required competencies for engineers in the context of advanced systems engineering and derive a novel empirical competency model. Based on this empirical model, possibilities for the conceptualization of competency measures through the framework of constructive alignment at the academic level are presented.