THE UNITED FEDERATION OF MODELS: MODEL-BASED SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AT ITS BEST

As systems become more complicated, managing them from conceptual design through disposal has become significantly more difficult. Traditional process- and document-based methods often struggle to cope with the realities of designing and fielding modern engineered systems; relevant information can become segmented and out-of-sync, leading to costly errors.

The International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) initiated a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) initiative nearly fifteen years ago; one of the fruits of this effort is the System Modeling Language (SysML). Modern SysML tools are quite mature and have considerable capabilities to capture, characterize, and connect information.

A number of efforts are currently underway to maximize the value of SysML models, including the development of visualization, co-simulation, and robust model integration. An entire ecosystem of adjacent tools is evolving that will significantly impact the practice of systems engineering within the next five years. This paper presents an integrated look at publically-available information about existing worldwide efforts and their implications for systems engineering practitioners.