Our societal challenges and high-tech manufacturing industry are too complex to be solved from independent disciplines alone. Systems Engineering, as an overarching discipline, can bring components together. This method looks at a system as a whole and provides much-needed coordination. In a series of interviews with experts from industry and research, we create a picture of the current state of the sector and its ambitions for the coming years. The NXTGEN Hightech track, which aims to increase the number of systems engineers for the high-tech manufacturing industry in the Netherlands, leads us in this effort.
Today, Joost Dierkse of Thermo Fisher Scientific and Jos de Klerk of VDL ETG share their insights on the importance of systems engineering within their organizations. They emphasize the need for multidisciplinary skills, soft skills, and collaboration to realize complex technical systems. Good to know: VDL ETG specializes in designing and producing complex modules for organizations such as ASML and Thermo Fisher, enabling them to turn those modules into complete systems.
Thermo Fisher, a global company based in Eindhoven for 75 years, is a market leader in developing and producing electron microscopes. Its engineers design these microscopes at a system level, often in collaboration with suppliers such as VDL-ETG. This collaborative way of working typifies the value chain in the high-tech industry, especially in and around Brainport Eindhoven.
Indispensable role
Joost Dierkse (Thermo Fisher Scientific) and Jos de Klerk (VDL ETG) are adamant right at the start of the conversation: systems engineering plays an indispensable role in the modern high-tech industry. De Klerk: “To make our high-tech, multidisciplinary products for various customers, we need a lot of systems thinkers.”
At VDL ETG, systems engineering is an integral part of the organization. With about 600 engineers, the company focuses on designing and delivering complex functional modules. This requires a wide range of skills. “Hard skills you can often learn through tasks like requirement engineering – the whole flow of stakeholder needs – and system decompositions,” says De Klerk. “You have to be able to define the system in terms of functions, logic, and physical elements. That alone is theoretically enormously complex and, therefore, requires a lot from the systems engineer. On top of that comes soft skills like presentation and communication techniques, but also empathic behavior.”
Those soft skills come down to a professional relationship with the customer or client. “You have to be able to switch very well between what that client says they want and what you think the client needs. You should never come across as arrogant, but the other side, just meekly following what the client says, is definitely not good either. Who has the final say? Ownership of the product to be made is a delicate matter. And obviously, that works very differently when you’re dealing with a startup than when you work for ASML, for example.” Regardless, it is essential to take ownership of your product even as a supplier, says de Klerk. “Because only then can you add value to the chain.”
Effective process guidance
Joost Dierkse confirms the importance of soft skills and multidisciplinary thinking from his experience at Thermo Fisher. With him, that aspect is visible in decision-making processes, for example. An electron microscope is made up of lots of hardware and software components with all underlying principles and subsystems. “Ultimately, you want the electron microscope as a whole to work as efficiently as possible,” he says. “For that, it’s necessary to look beyond the discipline you specialize in. If one thing is essential for our systems engineers is that they can think, work, and communicate multidisciplinarily. Those who bring all those lines together and thus, in effect, direct these processes are what we call systems architects. We expect them to bring all disciplines and everyone into the systemic thinking process while making decisions without formal power, which makes their soft skills crucial.”
Talent Development
Multidisciplinary collaboration is thus essential within systems engineering, whether you are a supplier or a client. “We expect systems engineers to look beyond their discipline,” Dierkse explains. “Ultimately, they have to be more broadly skilled.” To get to that point, VDL ETG and Thermo Fisher greatly value internal talent development. “We offer growth opportunities within the company to develop people more broadly,” Dierkse said. ” For example, you can gain work experience in different disciplines. You can learn a lot from colleagues with different talents, backgrounds, and experiences, both at the Eindhoven location and in collaboration with colleagues worldwide. And the company itself can therefore place the right emphases, aimed at developing company-specific knowledge and skills.”
In addition, Dierkse and De Klerk see the benefits of a standardized curriculum for systems engineering, as envisioned by the NXTGEN Hightech project. “I hope that by the end of the project, there will be a curriculum that universities and colleges can use,” says de Klerk. “Then, you can get interested people prepped for this role early.”
Such a course helps to become familiar with the basics of different disciplines and their relationships. “This also encourages you to learn to communicate and collaborate better with professionals from different fields,” Dierkse says. “Later, you can develop further within a company and apply this interdisciplinary approach within company-specific circumstances.” At the same time, understanding how other companies organize systems engineering also remains valuable, he adds. “We all have an interest in attracting and retaining talent. We can help each other with that. For example, by sharing best practices. That makes such a curriculum even more essential for companies in the value chain to join, while students gain insight into how multidisciplinary work adds value in different situations.”
Enthusiasm for the profession
Letting go of a mono-disciplinary view of the world can be challenging. But once it interests you and you develop a feel for it, it is a tremendous enrichment to your role and career, De Klerk and Dierkse say. “Systems engineering is wonderful,” De Klerk adds. “Developing a fully integrated system and seeing it function is extremely rewarding.”
Dierkse stresses the importance of spreading the spark to new generations. “By understanding how different components, functions, and disciplines work together and influence each other, you can develop coherence, leading to innovative results and sustainable solutions. We need to enthuse people to want to look beyond the boundaries of disciplines,” he says. “That’s where it gets difficult, but that’s also where the fun begins.”
Collaboration
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