Organization and engineering systems (OES) are critical to the production industry. They are capital intensive, and must deal with a high degree of uncertainty.

The objectives of OES systems can be hierarchically structured, that is, an objective on one level depends on several objectives on one or more lower levels. Changing an objective due to a logical inconsistency in such a system can be very costly.

The author analyzes the process levels and the errors that might occur in such systems by assigning a graph to objectives that represents the dependencies between the subobjectives of a system. Therefore, changing the overall objective essentially means changing objectives on the lowest levels of a system, the so-called atomic objectives (those that do not depend on subobjectives at lower levels).

The author points out that there is a need for formal models for the detection and solution of logical errors in the objectives of OES, and that current organization and engineering systems do not support such approaches. Stratifying the analysis levels into logical stratum and mathematical stratum could be especially useful for the development of logically sound analysis tools for OES.