A system

Our class for this week started with defining what system is and bringing ideas and examples of a system. It did not take time for almost everyone to mention at least one system or bring examples of systems. This is due to the fact that almost everything have a system or so much things humans or machines can do has been increasingly assembled or incorporated in to a system for different reason; for efficiency, effectiveness, cost reduction, better performance, etc.

A system can be defined as ‘a group of interdependent items that interact regularly to perform a task’.

It was stressed in class that designing a system begins with defining the objective which followed by setting the boundaries, inputs, process and out put.
Objectives are the expected end results or output which can be implicit or explicit.
Input is something that is put into a system or in the process to achieve output or results. Out put is the end result of the system or process it can be information, product, service etc. Output can be the individual result of a single sub system or a big system and the output of one part of a system can be an input to another part of a system

In a system one has to look at individual components that make up a system. These components can be parts, elements, variables or sub-systems. They can be physical objects that can be felt or they can be abstract objects or ideas that can not be found or touched. Another big issue to consider is also the internal relationships among the objects of a system besides the environment in which the system exists. All these elements of a system play an important role. Taking into consideration all this elements mentioned above a system can be then defined as ‘a set of things that affect one another within an environment and form a larger pattern that is different from any of the parts’