PRODUCT LINE ENGINEERING WITHIN A DIGITAL ENGINEERING / MODEL-BASED SYSTEMS ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT FOR GROUND VEHICLE SYSTEMS

The ISO 26580 Software and systems engineering — Methods and tools for the feature-based approach to software and systems product line engineering (PLE)1 standard provides the guidance and direction to be successfully applied to military ground vehicle systems. Implementing PLE provides military stakeholder benefits such as increased commonality, functionality, quality, and productivity, while also delivering decreased risk and cost. Moreover, these benefits last through multiple generations of ground vehicle sytems. Merging PLE into a Digital Engineering (DE)/Model-based System Engineering (MBSE) environment is a critical proven combination for successful automotive manufacturers today. This same approach can be extended to the military ground vehicle family of vehicles resulting in the ability to rapidly design, assess, evaluate, simulate, manage, and instantiate product variants from a common feature catalog.