Abstract Industry faces challenges for the development of complex technical products. Systems Engineering (SE) is expected to solve these. Within the last years, the awareness for SE has drastically risen in German industry companies in the sectors of automotive engineering, machinery and plant engineering and electrical devices. However, the introduction of SE itself is a highly challenging task for many big companies within the industry sectors mentioned. This paper revisits the 2013 study ‘Systems Engineering in industrial practice’ and checks weather its five-year-old findings remain true. The goal is to identify the reasons for the companies’ struggles. Therefore, expectations towards SE are derived and a detailed analysis of the barriers for SE introduction is described based on two customers who did not take part in the study. Furthermore, ten requirements for a successful SE introduction are described and compared with available introduction methods.