A maturity model for the deployment of Systems Engineering processes

Nowadays, increasing competition on markets forces companies to improve constantly their competitiveness. For this, they have to control not only the design cycles of their products thanks to an efficient and responsive organization, but also interactions between people, processes and technologies involved in design. However, it is problematic considering the increasing complexity of products. A solution is to apply the principles of Systems Engineering (SE), a proven interdisciplinary approach that defines an effective organization in the form of processes. However it raises a set of questions such as: how to define SE compliant processes including business specificities and how to know if the company has the required organization and skills to deploy them successfully? This article aims to answer this last question for large companies designing complex products under the assumption that interoperability, i.e. the ability to work efficiently together, is a deployment key factor. On the basis of a survey of existing contributions applicable to the deployment, we introduce an innovative maturity model to be used before any deployment action. This paper explains the design approach used to elaborate and validate it, presents its content and shows how to use it.