{"id":3423,"date":"2015-01-15T10:01:49","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T18:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.plm.automation.siemens.com\/t5\/Teamcenter-Blog\/Systems-Engineering-a-Product-Line-Bring-on-the-Legos\/ba-p\/288102"},"modified":"2026-03-26T08:51:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:51:34","slug":"systems-engineering-a-product-line-bring-on-the-legos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/teamcenter\/systems-engineering-a-product-line-bring-on-the-legos\/","title":{"rendered":"Systems Engineering a Product Line: Bring on the Legos!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Systems Engineering<\/a>: The Beginning?<\/p>\n

Back in the 80\u2019s I remember playing with the Space Line of Legos which included: moon bases, spaceships, rockets and endless hours of fun. As I\u2019m writing, I\u2019m feeling a wave of nostalgia come over me for that moment in time\u2026 racing down the aisles of the toy store and placing a death grip on the Lego box, leaping head first into the car for home, opening my new Lego set, and meticulously following the directions as I build at my parents’ kitchen table.<\/p>\n

After a bit of focused time (also known as quiet time for my parents) I would have configured this gorgeous marvel of ingenuity packed with features galore (antennae, lasers, rockets) that would bring me hours of fun well into the evening.<\/p>\n

Like most people who enjoy Legos, I didn\u2019t just purchase one set and call it good. My parents bought me many sets to complete the story landscape. When there is no air in space, certainly you need a space car to take you from the outer region base on Planet X to your ship so that you can defeat the evil alien empire \u2026<\/p>\n

As my heroic day ended and the empire was defeated, my parents would unfortunately ask me to clean-up. This meant taking apart the vehicle and placing it into the Lego Bin. This container of dreams housed many space adventures and over time the bins filled and my parents stopped buying me more Legos. Now, this wasn\u2019t because I out grew my toys, rather it was because my parents discovered the truth and conveyed their wisdom onto me:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you need more Legos? You can just build these sets with what you have \u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Click!<\/strong> The light bulb turned on and so began my systems engineering journey into Product Family Engineering, also known as Product Line Engineering.<\/p>\n

The systems engineering concept behind Product Line Engineering is to create a portfolio of related products using a shared set of engineering assets (lego blocks\/systems) and an efficient means of production (me!). By thinking of the product portfolio, or product family as a single entity, Product Line Engineering helps realize orders-of-magnitude improvements in engineering cost, time to market, productivity, product line scalability and quality.<\/p>\n

By following industry standards and best practices, Systems Driven Product Development<\/a> (SDPD) and Teamcenter can\u00a0help you achieve these organizational benefits by expanding best-in-class Product Lifecycle Management<\/a> (PLM) capabilities for architecture modelling and configuration management while bringing them up a level.<\/p>\n

As SDPD continues its journey, we will keep you informed on the improvements we\u2019re making to benefit your Product Line Engineering implementation through this blog, conferences and other avenues.<\/p>\n

In the future, I\u2019d like to discuss more about:<\/strong><\/p>\n