System Architecture and Complexity: Contribution of Systems of Systems to Systems Thinking

The emergence of a true systemic science - the systemic one - capable of rigorously addressing the many problems posed by the design and management of the evolution of modern complex systems is therefore urgently needed if wants to be able to provide satisfactory answers to the many profoundly systemic challenges that humanity will have to face at the dawn of the third millennium. This emergence is of course not easy because one can easily understand that the development of the systemic is mechanically confronted with all the classical disciplines which can all pretend to bring part of the explanations necessary to the understanding of a system and which do not naturally see a good eye a new discipline claim to encompass them in a holistic approach ... The book of Jacques Printz is therefore an extremely important contribution to this new emerging scientific and technical discipline: it is indeed first of all one of the very few "serious" works published in French and offering a good introduction to the systemic. It gives an extremely broad vision of this field, taking a thread given by the architecture of systems, in other words by the part of the systemic that is interested in the structure of systems and their design processes, which allows everyone to fully understand the issues and issues of the systemic. We can only encourage the reader to draw all the quintessence of the masterful work of Jacques Printz which mixes historical reminders explaining how the systemic emerged, introduction to key concepts of the systemic and practical examples to understand the nature and the scope of the ideas introduced.

Table of Contents:
Foreword ix Preface xiii Part 1. The Foundations of Systemics 1 Introduction to Part 1 3 Chapter 1. The Legacy of Norbert Wiener and the Birth of Cybernetics 5 1.1. The birth of systemics: the facts 6 1.1.1. The idea of integration 8 1.1.2. Implementation and the first applications 14 1.2. Modeling for understanding: the computer science singularity 21 1.3. Engineering in the 21st Century 24 1.4. Education: systemics at MIT 29 Chapter 2. At the Origins of System Sciences: Communication and Control 33 2.1. A little systemic epistemology 33 2.2. Systems sciences: elements of systemic phenomenology 38 2.2.1. Control/regulation 42 2.2.2. Communication/information 45 2.3. The means of existence of technical objects 51 Chapter 3. The Definitions of Systemics: Integration and Interoperability of Systems 55 3.1. A few common definitions 55 3.2. Elements of the system 59 3.3. Interactions between the elements of the system 62 3.4. Organization of the system: layered architectures 65 3.4.1. Classification trees 65 3.4.2. Meaning and notation: properties of classification trees 74 Chapter 4. The System and its Invariants 83 4.1. Models 83 4.2. Laws of conservation 89 4.2.1. Invariance 96 4.2.2. System safety: risks 106 Chapter 5. Generations of Systems and the System in the System 113 5.1. System as a language 116 5.2. The company as an integrated system 119 5.2.1. The computer, driving force behind the information system 120 5.2.2. Digital companies 126 Part 2. A World of Systems of Systems 129 Introduction to Part 2 131 Chapter 6. The Problem of Control 133 6.1. An open world: the transition from analog to all-digital 133 6.2. The world of real time systems 142 6.3. Enterprise architectures: the digital firm 145 6.4. Systems of systems 147 Chapter 7. Dynamics of Processes 151 7.1. Processes 153 7.2. Description of processes 158 7.2.1. Generalizing to simplify 165 7.2.2. Constructing and construction pathways 166 7.2.3. Evolution of processes 168 7.2.4. Antagonistic processes: forms of invariants 170 7.3. Degenerative processes: faults, errors and “noise” 173 7.4. Composition of processes 176 7.4.1. Antagonistic interactions 178 7.5. Energetics of processes and systems 181 Chapter 8. Interoperability 191 8.1. Means of systemic growth 195 8.2. Dynamics of the growth of systems 197 8.2.1. The nature of interactions between systems 200 8.2.2. Pre-eminence of the interaction 204 8.3. Limits of the growth of systems 207 8.3.1. Limits and limitations regarding energy 211 8.3.2. Information energy 214 8.3.3. Limitations of external origin: PESTEL factors 216 8.4. Growth by cooperation 221 8.4.1. The individuation stage 223 8.4.2. The cooperation/integration stage 226 8.4.3. The opening stage 233 Chapter 9. Fundamental Properties of Systems of Systems 235 9.1. Semantic invariance: notion of a semantic map 235 9.2. Recursive organization of the semantic 239 9.3. Laws of interoperability: control of errors 240 9.3.1. Models and metamodels of exchanges 241 9.3.2. Organization “in layers” of the models and systems 243 9.3.3. Energy performance of the interaction between systems 245 9.3.4. Systemic approach to system safety 247 9.4. Genealogy of systems 252 Conclusion 257 List of Acronyms 269 References 275 Index 277

About the Author :
Jacques Printz is Associate Professor at Université Catholique de Lille (where he is Chairman of the Ethics, technology and transhumanism group) in France, and a member of the ETHICS laboratory. He is also Emeritus Professor at CNAM, France, where until 2009 he held the Chair in Software Engineering.