Designing Sustainable Systems
The Center — and the Master of Science in Engineering — led by former MIT Professor Dr. David S. Cochran, a two-time Shingo Prize winner and world-renowned scholar in System Design.
Overview
About the SE Center
The CSD Requirements Ledger
The EEE Nexus
The Program
Connect
Director, Center of Excellence in Systems Engineering
SE Graduate Program Director
Thank you for considering a Master of Science in Engineering with a concentration in Systems Engineering from Purdue University Fort Wayne. You will work directly with former MIT Professor Dr. David S. Cochran, a world-renowned scholar in System Design and a two-time winner of the prestigious Shingo Research Prize for his work designing sustainable enterprise systems.
The PFW Systems Engineering concentration gives you the skills and mindset to facilitate the practice of system design and lead change in your organization. Course projects build the skills to resolve real-world issues and address your business growth challenges.
The Center partners with industry, healthcare, and education to apply system design to real problems — through course projects, industry-sponsored work, and thesis research conducted with a student’s employer or in conjunction with the Center. Research and engagement areas include:
Tone — the team’s attitude, mindset, and spirit toward problem solving.
Thinking — establishes the logical design of the system.
Structure — defines how the system operates.
Work — implemented with Standard Work.
Facing demographic shifts, financial strain, and staff turnover, Purdue Fort Wayne applied Collective System Design — informed by Deming and Lean — to strengthen its student-success mission: the first use of CSD at a university. The breakthrough was the Student Lifecycle — the stages successful students move through toward graduation — shifting focus to cross-unit collaboration and information flow rather than individual units.
Personnel define collaborative processes, diagram them, and verify each against student impact — advancing students’ Academic, Financial, Career, and Living wellness. Early indicators are positive on key student-success metrics.
We convene an organization’s departments to define and verify the processes that achieve its goals — here, the desired student workflow. Each standard process step defines “Normal” and becomes the Plan in the PDCA cycle.
The Center of Excellence in Systems Engineering is one of 16 global partners in SME 5.0 — an EU-funded international research project charting a strategic roadmap toward intelligent, sustainable, and human-centered small and medium enterprises.
As the project’s United States partner, Purdue Fort Wayne contributes its Collective System Design expertise in sustainable, human-centric enterprise design.
A signature method of the Center is the 12-Step Collective System Design Process — one method for transforming an idea or problem into a build-able, testable, and improvable design.
It integrates the best methods for design — Axiomatic Design, Use Cases, System Boundary & Interface Definition, FMEA, and DFX — around a common System Design Language.
Developed with the Center of Excellence in Systems Engineering, the Primer is an interactive slide deck that walks students and teams through a complete CSD-grounded design process — from problem statement through verification, validation, and standard work.
Authored by Prof. David S. Cochran, Ph.D. and Joseph J. Smith.
The Center is building the CSD Requirements Ledger — a web tool that replaces Lucid, Word, and PowerPoint for the 12-Step Collective System Design process. One living ledger owns every artifact a design team needs — Functional Requirements, the three structured diagrams, supporting tables, and the final report — all generated from a single source of truth, so nothing drifts or goes stale.
Model-Based Systems Engineering promises one connected model — every requirement, function, and solution traceable, nothing scattered or stale. The catch was always the cost of building that model by hand. Now you do the engineering; the AI captures your design into the model and exposes what still needs refining.
An AI agent grounded in Collective System Design and the 12-Step Primer reviews your entries and chats with you about the design process in real time.
It questions, surfaces gaps, and teaches the method as you work — but it never authors your ledger. The thinking stays yours.
- ✓ Reviews your entries in real time, grounded in CSD
- ✓ Asks the questions a great mentor would
- ✓ Teaches the 12-Step method as you work
- ✗ Never authors your requirements or design
Illustrative: automating the documentation toil moves the engineer’s effort back toward the solution.
The Entrepreneurship & Enterprise Engineering (EEE) Nexus is a hands-on space where students from every major turn ideas into products — a university–industry pathway that builds the interdisciplinary, applied skills today’s economy demands.
The Center of Excellence in Systems Engineering directs the day-to-day activities of the Nexus, including its Innovation Lab.
- An entrepreneurial mindset and a structured decision-making process
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration across business, engineering & design
- Hands-on practice: idea generation → product development → prototyping
- Community-partnered projects built on the entrepreneurship lifecycle
The Innovation Lab is the central hub of the Nexus for experiential learning, prototyping, and product development — where students translate digital designs into physical models, validate form and fit, and iterate quickly.
The Master of Science in Engineering (MSE) with a concentration in Systems Engineering gives you the skills and mindset to facilitate system design and lead change — applying theory to real-world problems through hands-on course projects.
- Degree
M.S. in Engineering — Systems Engineering concentration - Credits
30 for the MSE — or a focused 12-credit Certificate - Format
Designed for working adults — in-person & asynchronous online - Plan of Study
Tailored to your career goals in your first semester
Center of Excellence in Systems Engineering
Master of Science in Engineering
Partner with the Center, or earn an internationally recognized graduate degree — designed for working adults, taught by dedicated faculty, grounded in Collective System Design™.