Case Study of Systems Engineering Application on the Development of New Service Industries in Taiwan

Basing on the accumulated technology strength & intellectual properties in various industrial fields, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), launched several pilot-run programs for developing “new service oriented Industries” in year 2003. In the feasibility phase of those programs, systems engineering (SE) prospective approaches were tentatively applied. “Fresh Food Logistics System”, “Telecom Home Care System” & “Global Outsourcing Services System” programs were identified as three major pilot programs. Acting as a program office in ITRI, Center for Aerospace & Systems Technology (CAST), designed a customized systems engineering procedure from concept exploration, system requirement review (SRR), system design review (SDR) to preliminary design review (PDR), etc., for facilitating the feasibility studies of those pilot programs. Not likely with traditional systems engineering applications on “industrial system or products”, those are trials to apply systems engineering approaches to evaluate whether a proposed “service system business models & operation models” could be successfully developed as a “new service products” with a complex of various elements & constrains. In this paper, the procedures, modifications & results of systems engineering approach trials on those pilot programs will be discussed. It was proposed that a customized SE procedure is viable & helpful to evaluate “service system business model & operation model”. As a result, through a customized SE procedure simulation, the feasibility of a proposed business/operation contain with various technology, finance, management & business elements & constrains could be efficiently evaluated. It was also found that domain technologies, multi-discipline experiences of the SE personnel & the cross-functional availabilities in the organization are key factors to the significance of applying SE procedures for evaluate “new service oriented industries & new service product” programs’ feasibility.