Application of systems engineering in a collaborative environment

Systems Engineering (SE) is a methodological approach to manage the development of complex systems. In spite of its promise of benefits the approach has not been widely put into practice; it has mainly been applied in fields requiring high safety and reliability. Recently the increasing complexity in the engineering environment and the development of supporting IT systems have raised new interest in SE. Companies are especially interested in how the SE approach could be adapted to their needs in the distributed collaborative engineering environment, potentially supported by evolving PLM systems. This paper discusses the challenges of SE application in a collaborative environment, based on the on-going Finnish national research project SE-PLM.