The effect of adopting rapidly emerging technology items during the developmental phase on systems engineering design in aviation industry

Abstract

Requests from stakeholders to include Rapidly Emerging Technology Items into the system under development during the design phase become essential to maintain competitiveness. This paper aims to analyze the effect of adopting the Rapidly Emerging Technology Items (RETIs) during the development process phase of the Systems Engineering approach. Subject matter experts were surveyed with various qualitative questions. Purposeful sampling was used in choosing participants who were "information-rich." Therefore, the individuals and sites selected should be knowledgeable people who have experience in engineering projects' technical and managerial aspects. Referring to the pattern of the data and the author's reflexivity, five themes were identified in this paper, including the problem validation, design professionality, the drivers of the Rapidly Emerging Technology Items (RETIs), the technology type, interaction between the design organization and the RETIs drivers, and the tool for evaluating the rapidly emerging technologies. The analysis of the themes revealed that, due to the adoption of RETIs, the design organization needs to re-define the requirements, re-verify and re-validate the System-Of-Interest (SOI), which leads to longer time in system design and increases the allocated budget. Finally, improvement interventions are required to ensure that RETIs are adopted efficiently throughout the development phase.