Systems engineering perspectives on the 2500‐year‐old Art of War by Sun Tzu

Just how old are the ideas underpinning the interdisciplinary, holistic systems engineering? (See J.G. Landels, Engineering in the Ancient World, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000.) In this paper, the author illustrates how some of the fundamental thinking, philosophy and approaches of systems engineering are deeply embedded in the classical, 2500‐year‐old Chinese Art of War by Sun Tzu. To do this, the author draws upon the definitions and conceptualizations of systems engineering by INCOSE or endorsed by INCOSE Fellows. For the citations of Art of War in English, he draws upon an almost century old translation in 1910 by Lionel Giles [http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi‐e.html]. Specifically, an illustration is provided on how Sun Tzu emphasized critically the importance of subsystems within a system. Also 2.5 millennia ago Sun Tzu had already predicated that performance outcomes were dependent upon a ‘‘quantifying’’ information. Finally, corporate strategy processes in the ASEAN region as inspired by the Art of War of Sun Tzu are contrasted by the author with the conceptualization of seven facets of systems engineering by Bahill and Gissing [IEEE Trans Syst Man Cybernet Part C Appl Rev 28(4) (1998), 516– 527]. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng