The term facilities is generally used to refer to offices, factories, warehouses, manufacturing sites, repair sites etc. They are used both in the production of systems and in their support.  Facilities are expensive and contribute to the system's life-cycle cost.  They need to be effectively managed.

Introduction

Facilities required for Life Cycle of a System
Characteristics of Facilities
Checklist of Facility Issues
Metrics to quantify the performance of facilities
IT Facility Management

This is a technique for analysing products/designs or processes in order to identify potential means of failure and the effect they might have. It assumes possible component or functionality failures and assesses their effect on system reliability. It ensures that the interrelationships between component/function failures and system failures are understood.  Some particular uses of FMECA are to support Design for Safety, Design for Operability, Design for Availability.

Introduction

FMECA/FMEA Recording
Notes on use of FMECA/FMEA as part of system design

Effective filing is critically important to one's personal effectiveness, to the effective running of a project, and to the effective running of a team or sub-project. Its importance is often underestimated by both managers and engineers and leads to vast amounts of wasted time, increased stress, and problems that could otherwise have been avoided..

Introduction

File Ordering
Responsibility for Filing System
Guidelines on What to Keep/Not to Keep
Archiving
Miscellaneous Personal Filing Habits
The Impact of IT

This chapter addresses a few general concerns and issues associated with Finance at a company level.  Some understanding of this is useful to Systems Engineers and those involved in Project Management since it is something important to the organisation as a whole and some of the company people with whom project people will have to interact.  Financial issues associated with general systems engineering or general project management largely relate to FINANCIAL APPRAISAL.

Introduction

Definitions of Terms
Types of Accountant
The Balance Sheet
The Profit and Loss Account
The importance of cash flow and working capital
Miscellaneous Notes

Financial Appraisal involves assessing a given option or project from a financial viewpoint. It is widely used in business decisions where the consequences of decisions can be explicitly represented in terms of costs and revenues. In a systems engineering and project management context it may be only one of a number of inputs into a decision.

Financial appraisal considers an option or project purely in monetary terms. The option/project costs money and it is expected to earn money. Financial appraisal is a range of measures and techniques which measure their profitability or otherwise.

Introduction

Factors considered in Financial Appraisals
Financial Measures
Making Financial Decisions
Miscellaneous Issues
Using Financial Appraisal Techniques: Choosing between investment opportunities
Using Financial Appraisal Techniques: Deciding whether to make or buy
Using Financial Appraisal Techniques: Build quick or build slow
Using Financial Appraisal Techniques: Extend life or replace
Using Financial Appraisal Techniques: lease/hire or buy capital equipment
Using Financial Appraisal Techniques: Judging financial stability
Using Financial Appraisal Techniques: Negotiating Payment Terms
Software/Modeling Support

This chapter is concerned with the process of managing finances within an organisation, and more particularly within a project.

Introduction

Sources of Finance for an Organisation
Individuals Accounting for their time
Individuals Accounting for their Expenses
Item/Service Commitment and Payment
Setting Budgets
General Notes on Accounting
Dealing with certain aspects of costs
Financial Management within a Project
Managing Financial Information/Data
Miscellaneous Notes
Some (controversial?) thoughts

A Flow Chart is a way of diagrammatically representing a process or procedure as a sequence of steps, together with decision points. Flow charts help in understanding complex processes, and it is much easier to identify faults or weaknesses in processes when they are represented as flow diagrams than if they are described in text.

Introduction

Functional Analysis Techniques - Functional Flow Block Diagrams (FFBD)
Flow Process Charts (sometimes called Work Process Charts)

Formula and laws underlie engineering. Although systems engineering and project management, in general, requires little knowledge about formula and laws, they are relevant to much specialist engineering, and it is useful having at least some passing familiarity with them. This section provides a reference to some of the more commonly used formula and laws. There exist many references books which give more extensive lists and derivations.

Introduction

Areas, Volumes, and Shapes
Geometric/Trigonometric Equations
Complex numbers
Matrices
Axis transformations
Vector and Tensor Analysis
Series
Differentiation and Integration
Common differentials/integrals
Laws
Some examples of widely used engineering formula and constants
Mathematical terms
Engineering Equivalences

Functional Analysis is the structured use of functional descriptions. In functional analysis an object is described in terms of the things it does or must do.  Applied to a system Functional Analysis involves understanding what the system as a whole must do, and progressively identifying and analyzing what is required of the component parts of the system.  It is a key system engineering design technique.  Functional Analysis uses diagrammatic notations and data management processes to understand the interrelationships between functions.

Introduction

Functional Descriptions
Functional Decomposition
Event, Information, and Data Flows
Data Flow Diagrams
The Context Diagram
The Data Dictionary
The State Transition Diagram (STD)
Dynamic Functional Models
The application of functional analysis to system design
Comparison of Software Design with that for general System Design
Comments on the use of Functional Analysis and Design techniques to supp
Benefits of Functional Approach
Additional Guidelines for use of Functional Analysis
Functional Analysis/Design of People within System
Role of Functional Decomposition in Management of System Engineering tasks
Use of Toolsets to Support Functional Analysis and Design