Independent Systems Engineering vs. Programmatic Systems Engineering
It is unlikely that any other Team partner will employ the same or an "open" and fully-interoperable Systems Engineering practice as any other partner on the Integration Program. This is obvious since it is known that many larger companies fail to share a unified Systems Engineering practice within their own divisions, sectors or activities. With so many variant and home-grown Systems Engineering practices, even within the same companies, why should we expect that any single Systems Engineering practice within one of these activities on the Program could effectively share all the Program knowledge of the diagnostics design with any other Team partner? This absolutely bolsters the reason for alarm that since industry is increasingly dabbling in so many individualized Systems Engineering practices, that the precision gained from the employment of each individual Systems Engineering practice, may be grossly compromised in the process of the honing of the information to fit the effective Systems Engineering practice institutionalized to serve the partners on the Program.
As a result, the DoD Programs that require the concept of Teaming or partnering, shall inevitably fail to share a unified Program Systems Engineering practice that truly incorporates the interchangeability and compatibility of true diagnostic and/or prognostic knowledge exchange. This inadequacy can only increase uncertainty at the System Level and thereby inviting the opportunity for such relentless experiences as System Level False Alarms, inadequate sensor utility, ineffective and ambiguous isolation capabilities, lower system availability, and uncontrollable supportability costs, etc. Eventually, over time, the experiences will likely continue to grow as new components or substitute designs/suppliers are brought into the mix that are not compelled to adopt to a Programmatic Systems Engineering structure that can adequately and completely resolve the interchangeability of the diagnostic information throughout the design, development and support of the System or end-product.
Programmatic Systems Engineering across all Team partners is essential for diagnostic and prognostics (and/or notwithstanding, FMECA/Reliability, Maintainability, etc.) sanity at the System Level. Otherwise, the extensive investment of time, effort and funding to assure precision and accuracy at the lowest levels risk becoming vacuous and expensive endeavors throughout the life cycle of the System or end-product. We have to ask ourselves if we truly are engaged in the objectives of mitigating False Alarms and any of the prior mentioned maladies that are contagious in an environment devoid of a Program-wide Systems Engineering practice targeting the entire diagnostic engineering activity across and throughout the individual Systems Engineering practices within each contributing Team partner and any relevant COTS suppliers