Integrated Systems Engineering & Horses…
Communication is vital to integrated systems engineering…My daughter is nine years old and has been riding horses since she was three. She has loved horses for as long as I can remember, making us watch the movies Spirit, War Horse, and Black Beauty, and any other movie related to horses… over and over again. Her thirst for everything horse-related and the need to communicate to us in more detail about those horses led her to reading advanced (high school/college) horse encyclopedias by age seven.
I, on the other hand, am allergic to horses, and unfortunately discovered this when I was in middle school and had gone for a week-long trail ride and camping trip where Benadryl became my savior. While I bear no ill will towards horses because of my eyes swelling shut and inability to breathe, I now mainly think of horses as a fun mode of transportation… for other people.
Connect through Integrated Systems Engineering
So… where am I going with this? My daughter and I live in two different worlds, but we still need to connect and communicate. As a parent, if I didn’t understand her horse life at some level, I could never encourage and help her grow to be successful. If my daughter didn’t understand me – she would never consider my guidance and life experiences. As a parent connecting and communication are key, the same is true for integrated systems engineering with other stakeholders. (see Mark Sampson’s Systems Engineering applied to raising kids blog)
Recently, Dale Tutt and Nand Kochar wrote a thought Leadership article “Defining the Future of MBSE SysML v2” … if you haven’t checked it out yet, I find it hits home on my initial horse anecdote…
“First-generation Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tools have simply not kept up with the complexity of today’s products to define and share product data across large value chains. As a result, many projects suffer from cost overruns and delays. To transform our development process, we need to make systems engineering solutions broadly available across the enterprise – not just to the systems engineers.”
Dale Tutt and Nand Kochar
Systems Engineering isn’t just about modeling, it’s about communicating (failure to communicate is what we are living with today, consuming half or more of our program schedules fixing integration problems caused by missed communications).
The next big thing in Systems Engineering, SysML v2, isn’t about how you model, but how you connect and communicate. In my recent Realize LIVE session The Digital Thread Backbone, I hammer in on this. Consider that 70% of product engineering costs are determined early in product definition.
If you make poor decisions upfront – your costs increase. If you don’t effectively connect and communicate – your costs increase too because your decisions weren’t useful to others.
Until models are published as full participants in the product lifecycle, your modeled ideas cannot be effectively communicated and used to orchestrate connected engineering to be realized. By publishing the model and exposing Systems Architecture, you are engaging in communication that supports change, you are providing a blueprint for connected engineering that guides downstream development to build what you’ve architected, helping engineering understand and implement the decision made early in the product lifecycle.
Teamcenter connecting Systems Engineering
To that end, because this communication is vital, you have to be open, like we are in Teamcenter. This is why Siemens is not only signed on to openness, Siemens signed the Code of PLM Openness – an initiative driven by the ProSTEP iViP. As such – we are obligated to develop interoperable systems and fair business models.
The services Teamcenter provides for Systems Engineering extended value ARE NOT limited to System Modeling Workbench which is our tool of choice for integrated systems engineering but has been implemented by 3rd party modeling tools for SysML v1 tools like Rhapsody and Cameo.
So go ahead, capture your Systems Engineering data through modeling. Teamcenter is here to bring the architecture within alive and help you connect and communicate across the enterprise, so you have successful projects – within budget and on time. —by enabling communication to everyone involved in the product development process.
If you’re interested in learning more about systems engineering solutions, check the other blog posts we have and more information on the website.
–Jason Wickers
