A taxonomy-based perspective for systems of systems design methods

The phrase "System of Systems" (SoS) has been in use for at least the past ten years. As customers of the aerospace and defense industries began asking for broad capabilities rather than for single systems to meet specific requirements, the notion of a system comprised of multiple, independently operating systems has become more important as the way to meet the desired set of capabilities. Recently, systems of systems have been identified in many other domains, such as health care, energy, logistics, and transportation. Because individual systems can operate independently within an SoS, many engineering methods and tools used to design large-scale, but monolithic, systems do not appear to work for designing systems of systems. This paper presents a three-axis taxonomy that can guide design method development and use for systems of systems. Based on this perspective, two experimental methods applications are presented for SoS problems.