Teun Hendriks

Energy Transition Architect at TNO-ESI

Navigating the Dilemmas of Reuse

Bio.
Teun Hendriks is an experienced system architect with a keen interest to advance the field of Systems Engineering. Creating order out of chaos, shaping the ‘fuzzy front end’ of systems engineering is what intrigues him. His professional interest is to understand what foundations and way-of-working help design teams to better make the crucial design decisions early on and so better navigate this fuzzy front end. His competencies include system architecting; systems thinking; technical leadership; road mapping; planning and monitoring; facilitation and coaching; all in a systems engineering context. Teun Hendriks has worked across the globe with US, European, and Asian clients in diverse product areas, ranging from semiconductors, consumer & automotive electronics, professional vehicles (trucks) to complex high-tech cyber physical systems and the energy grid infrastructure.

Authors.
Teun Hendriks, Klaas Wijbrans, Jacques Verriet, and Rob Ekkel

Abstract.
Organizations in many engineering domains have invested heavily in standardization, modularization, reusable architectures, and Product Line Engineering (PLE). Yet the expected gains in productivity, predictability, and scalability often remain difficult to achieve or sustain. The challenge increasingly appears not to be creating reusable solutions, but applying, governing, and evolving them consistently across projects, organizations, and supply chains. This paper presents observations from the FuESSE25 study, a collaboration between Dutch grid operators and TNO investigating modularity, reuse, and Systems Engineering in the context of accelerating the expansion of the energy infrastructure. Across topics including modular building, testing, requirements, collaboration, and governance, five recurring dilemmas emerged: (1) projects versus product lines, (2) standardization versus variability, (3) autonomy versus harmonization, (4) delivering today versus scaling tomorrow, and (5) local decisions versus collective governance. The paper discusses what these dilemmas mean for Systems Engineers and how they influence everyday engineering decisions. The paper identifies five practical Systems Engineering principles for navigating these dilemmas: (1) moving knowledge out of projects, (2) designing variation deliberately, (3) communicating intent, (4) generalizing recurring patterns, and (5) aligning what scales while delegating what doesn’t. The paper concludes that realizing the benefits of reuse increasingly depends on making these trade-offs explicit and managing them consistently over time.