Understanding the System Context and its Impact: Case Study of Mechanized Sugarcane Harvesting in India

Designers often focus on the primary functions and performance requirements to develop the best architecture for a product or system. However, for most complex product systems the suitability of the architecture is often impacted by the system context. The interactions between the system architecture and supplementary systems and stakeholders in the context give rise to additional requirements and constrain the efficiency of the architecture. This paper presents a study of the system context for mechanized sugarcane harvesting in India to demonstrate these impacts. The study presents findings from primary research conducted by the authors to understand the context. The primary research consisted of multiple interviews with sugar mill officials and growers, as well as a few immersive field studies, involving direct observation of the system operation for a few days. SysML Block Definition Diagrams are used to record the elements and stakeholders in the system context. The exchange of values between stakeholders under different common configurations of the system is captured using value flow diagrams, and the effect of introducing a change in the system is studied. Thus, the study provides an example of how the interactions between the primary value producing system and the stakeholders in the system context can be identified and analyzed. Copyright © 2016 by John Deere India Private Limited. Published and used by INCOSE with permission.