Vision and Outlook for Lifecycle Excellence in the High-Tech Equipment Industry

The high-tech equipment industry is undergoing significant socio-technological transformations that will impact system engineering practices across the entire product lifecycle. This document outlines a vision for lifecycle excellence of high-tech equipment, focusing on quality assurance, diagnostics, sustainability, and supply chain management. Key transformational trends discussed in the document include the increasing role of AI, the growing scarcity of experts, and emphasis on sustainability. This works also highlights challenges such as the high cost of testing, the complexity of diagnostics, and the integration
of sustainability into product attributes. Key research directions discussed in the documents are:
- Quality assurance and control: focussing on the need for efficient testing of product lines, including change impact analysis and regression test selection.
- Intelligent diagnostics: emphasizing the importance of methods for root cause analysis and prognosis to reduce unscheduled downtime, and of methods for leveraging field learnings to enhance diagnostic knowledge.
- Environmental sustainability and circularity: integrating circularity and sustainability into systems engineering without compromising other system qualities.
- Supply chain management: developing methodologies for bi-directional information and data exchange between suppliers and buyers to improve diagnostics and overall system quality.
- Secure data handling: establishing frameworks for secure, resilient data pipelines, optimized sensor placement, and scalable storage.
- Combination of different aspects of the lifecycle: promoting the development of a holistic approach to engineering diverse system qualities across all phases of the lifecycle, to minimize risks and ensure overall equipment effectiveness.
- Human-centric design: embedding user-focused design principles throughout the system lifecycle to enhance usability, adaptability, and sustainability.