SOSX®, AI-enabled systems thinking, for any sector.
The SOSX book series
The Concept Design Advantage
Systems-of-systems modelling for engineers
Written for practising systems engineers and programme leads. It accompanies SOSX Engineering.
A companion to Seeing the Whole System, applied in an engineer's own terms: the concept design stage, where model-based systems engineering meets the wider system of systems every design has to live in.
It is the most technical book of the series, written for practising systems engineers and programme leads. The argument is that concept design is the high ground (the stage where a small, well-chosen decision moves the whole trade space), and that the way to hold it is to model the system of systems around the system of interest: typed connections and parameterised interfaces, gate-ready evidence packs, risk registers with pre- and post-mitigation severity, and feasibility studies that survive review.
The shape is the series' shape: theory, then practice, then the machine. Part II is fourteen chapters of concept-stage method, and none of it needs us, trade studies and analyses of alternatives, parameterisation discipline, Monte Carlo on a concept model, switching values, whole-life cost and discounting, critical path, float, Gantt and earned value, FMEA and fault trees, and the pitfalls that catch good teams. Part III then says what the machine does with the discipline, method by method: what it automates, what it makes auditable, what it keeps traceable, and what stays your engineering judgement.
It stands on its own; you do not need the central book first, though the two are better together.
Inside the book
Part I, Systems-of-systems theory for engineers
Chapters 1–7. The system of interest is not the whole system: boundaries and the hierarchy ladder, typed connections and parameterised interfaces, feedback in engineered ecosystems, emergence as combinational risk, why concept design is the high ground, and where MBSE ends and systems-of-systems thinking begins.
Part II, The practice
Chapters 8–21, and the longest part of the book: framing concept-design questions from horizon scans; trade studies and analyses of alternatives done systemically; parameterisation discipline; propagating uncertainty with Monte Carlo on a concept model; switching values: what would have to be true; whole-life cost, discounting and the concept-stage business case; scheduling with critical path, float, Gantt and earned value; the gate-ready evidence pack; feasibility studies that survive review; risk registers with pre- and post-mitigation severity; FMEA and fault trees; staying connected to the toolchain; multi-disciplinary workshops; and the pitfalls of concept-stage modelling.
Part III, The machine
Chapters 22–28. The six-step flow as a concept-design engine, grounded agentic research with citation discipline at machine speed, governance as the adoption surface, provable structural facts rather than plausible prose, adversarial validation and decision provenance, a method-by-method account of what the machine does with the discipline, and what lands in your toolchain, on the platform in live enterprise trials today.
Part IV, One spine, many domains
Chapter 29. The same spine elsewhere: how the discipline this book applies to concept design reads in the other seven fields of the series.
Plus a glossary and further reading in the appendices.
From the series’ shared figure library, the same illustrations you’ll find in the book.
And for the whole argument in one place, start with the central book: SOSX: Seeing the Whole System.