Systems Engineering and Industry Standards in the Age of Digital Technology

Results of a pilot project conducted in partnership with the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) are presented. The pilot examines potential business efficiencies and compliance improvements from the implementation of a structured data approach to the management and verification of requirements specified in API standards. It further explores an approach for developing digital requirements from published standards owned and maintained by international Standards Development Organizations (SDOs). SDOs create and maintain their standards based on a process which relies on consensus from technical experts throughout the world. This process encourages wide spread adoption resulting in improvements to both safety and reliability across the applicable industry. The project explored approaches to guide technical consensus committees in the structure and realization of their standards such that they more directly support the digital transformation.