Date of Award

2026-05-01

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Engineering

Advisor(s)

Lori M. Houghtalen

Abstract

The year 2020, often described as "the great accelerator" for emerging technologies, marked a period of significant transformation in lifestyles, work patterns, and business strategies. For instance, online meetings have become more convenient than in-person interactions, even with colleagues in neighboring offices. For small businesses, rapid regulatory and technological changes required swift adaptation, including the acquisition of new technologies, tools, and software to ensure survival. This transition also necessitated adopting indirect engagement, revising communication protocols, and digitally transforming information. Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in essential service sectors face also a fundamental paradox: their dependence on the skills, relationships, and tacit knowledge of key individuals creates significant vulnerability. This person-dependent model leads to operational fragility, with processes stalling during employee absences, unpredictable quality fluctuations, and critical knowledge remaining unshared or lost to competitors. Although these challenges are widely recognized, most existing approaches focus on large enterprises. In response, this thesis develops and applies a systems engineering-based method for digital transformation planning in a binational small healthcare enterprise. The work focuses on Dental Group, a dental clinic located in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, that serves patients connected to the United States and interacts with U.S. insurance processes, suppliers, laboratories, digital systems, and cybersecurity and compliance expectations. The scope of the thesis is not to redesign clinical treatment methods or evaluate medical outcomes. Instead, the focus is on the enterprise operation: workflows, roles, information flows, data, systems, documents, external interfaces, governance, cybersecurity readiness, compliance readiness, and performance measurement. The contribution of this thesis is a structured, traceable transformation-planning approach that uses systems engineering to help a small healthcare enterprise move from informal operations to a more controlled, measurable operating model. The methodology integrates Enterprise Systems Engineering, INCOSE systems engineering logic, the Zachman Framework, SysML modeling, gap analysis, KPI evaluation, governance, and validation. The method follows twelve steps, from defining the enterprise problem and the system boundary to validating the transformation plan. The results show that the main problem at Dental Group was not the absence of technology, but the lack of integration between people, processes, data, tools, responsibilities, controls, and measurable outcomes. The methodology produced measurable operational improvements. Compliance and cybersecurity were evaluated as readiness outcomes rather than completed certification results. The organization has improved its cybersecurity posture, but it is not certified by any agencies. The work found that technology alone does not create transformation. Transformation happens when technology is connected to people, processes, data, responsibilities, governance, controls, and measurable outcomes. This thesis concludes that a systems engineering-based approach can provide SMEs with a practical method to plan digital transformation in a controlled, traceable, and defensible way. Future work should focus on implementing the to-be architecture, collecting KPI data over time, strengthening cybersecurity and compliance controls, and deploying information governance methods and tools to support regulatory readiness and long-term enterprise resilience.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

116 p.

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Manuel Adrian Alvarez Ramirez

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