Determining a Digital Engineering Framework: A Systematic Review of What and How to Digitalize

Abstract

This study is a systematic review to determine a conceptual framework for digital engineering, the objective being to select what and how to digitalize Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition processes, data, and decisions. The research question was, What are the best practices for Digitalization and Industry 4.0 to inform DoD acquisition programs? The study analyzed 20 peer-reviewed scholarly articles from the last five years, written by academics and practitioners from 19 countries, focused on Digitalization and Industry 4.0 methods and technologies. This study had five major findings: digitalization projects begin with strategic choices; digitalization is done within an ecosystem that constrains the technical options; digitalization requires a method of execution that assesses opportunity and limits risk; digitalization results in new processes using new data models that enable better decisions; feedback on that new business model will come internally from users and externally from customers.