Exploring the impact, challenges and opportunities of the internet of things in systems engineering

随着物联网(IoT)的出现，一场数字革命正在进行中。它由设备或对象(事物)组成，这些设备或对象(事物)具有在交互时使用唯一寻址方案进行通信的能力，并能够协作以实现共同目标。物联网是几种数字技术融合趋势的结果。从将数字内容添加到普通物理对象的能力，到测量几乎任何地方的产品和人员的实时流动的能力，物联网技术带来了几个转变和颠覆业务的机会。然而，这种潜力的开发仍处于初级阶段，部分原因当然是这一概念的新颖性，但也因为它需要在不同的知识领域开展协同活动，如电信、信息学、电子和工业工程等。该计划的目标是从系统工程的角度了解物联网技术在新产品、服务和流程开发中整合的特殊性和挑战，从而提出一套全面的工具和方法来支持科技公司采用物联网系统。该计划旨在解决三个基于物联网的系统设计问题：(A)评估基于技术的问题，例如在选择技术、标准或协议时的权衡；(B)将物联网分析整合到系统设计中；(C)将创造性方法整合到物联网系统设计中。这将通过实际案例中的实验研究，使用干预研究方法，沿着三个不同的轴：(I)产品、(Ii)流程和(Iii)服务系统设计。新兴的物联网文献在比较物联网技术和为特定技术问题提出解决方案方面非常多产，但目前还没有系统工程师在整个技术决策过程中领导他们的实用指南。此研究计划的好处包括对物联网系统设计过程中要考虑的重要方面进行系统框架和分析，其中包括互操作性、隐私和安全性等。此外，将数据分析协议设计作为一项并行活动整合到硬件和软件设计中，以及整合创造性方法以最大限度地发掘物联网潜力，将导致系统工程框架和参考模型的演变。这需要使现有的框架适应物联网系统设计的现实，物联网系统的特点是快速发展的技术和公平分布和分散的物联网系统，这将需要结合敏捷和精益技术，同时保持其健壮性和可靠性。

A digital revolution is in course with the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT). It consists of devices or objects (things) possessing the ability to communicate using unique addressing schemes when interacting, and to cooperate to reach common goals. The IoT is the result of a trend of convergence among several digital technologies. From the ability to add digital content to an ordinary physical object to the ability of measuring real-time flow of products and people virtually anywhere, IoT technologies bring several opportunities to transform and disrupt businesses. However, the exploitation of this potential is still in its infancy, partially due to the novelty of the concept, of course, but also because it requires synergetic activities conducted in different fields of knowledge, such as telecommunications, informatics, electronics and industrial engineering, among others. This program's goal is to understand the particularities and challenges for the integration of IoT technologies for new product, service and process development, from the systems engineering perspective, so to propose a comprehensive set of tools and methods to support technology companies to adopt IoT systems.This is program aims to tackle three IoT-based system design issues: (a) assess technology-based issues, such as the tradeoffs from the choice of technologies, standards or protocols; (b) integrate IoT analytics into systems' design and; (c) integrate creativity methods to IoT-system design. This is to be done through experimental research within real cases, using intervention research methods, along three distinct axes: (i) product, (ii) process and (iii) service system design.The emerging literature on IoT is very prolific in comparing IoT technologies, and in proposing solutions for specific technical issues, but, currently, there are no practical guidelines for systems engineers to lead them throughout the technological decision process.The benefits of this research program include the systematic framing and analysis of important aspects to be considered during IoT-system design, including interoperability, privacy and security, to name a few. Besides, the integration of the data analytics protocol design as a concurrent activity to hardware and software design, as well as the integration of creativity methods to maximize the exploration of the IoT potentialities, will lead to the evolution of systems engineering frameworks and reference models. This is needed to adapt existing frameworks to the reality of IoT-system design, characterized by rapidly evolving technologies and fairly distributed and decentralized IoT systems, which would require the combination of agile and lean techniques, while keeping its robustness and reliability.