Last-mile knowledge engineering: Quest for the holy grail?

The problem of reliably structuring unseen knowledge, at scale, persists within systems engineering. An emergence-based method was developed to test the theory of applying de-abstraction reasoning to tacit-knowledge engineering. Informal, field testing was conducted on real-time, IT-related projects. Useful results were obtained within a fraction of the time it took comparative engineering with reductionist approaches, such as data and functional analysis. The resultant knowledge structure could be understood as a structure, which satisfied the generally-accepted definition of a system. Structural anomalies were resolved via the application of a normalization rationale. During construction, content semantics were competently resolved. The following system properties could be derived from the normalized structure: knowledge validity, system policy, core system with sub-systems, and a dual-layered, hierarchical control system. The hierarchical control system ensured system integrity during change events. Further, the hierarchical system enabled a 2nd level integration of multiple structures. The 2nd-level integration yielded a reliable core-system optimization of 45 per cent (estimated). The de-abstraction approach, as a content-independent approach, yielded no apparent dysfunction with mainstream, and/or traditional engineering approaches. Therefore, it could probably be integrated with existing system-engineering approaches. The results showed that tacit knowledge could be reliably engineered in diverse environments.