In Stay Sharp Episode 119, MBSE Isn’t Just for Rockets: Winning in Fast-Moving Consumer Markets, co-hosts Jonathan Scott and Juliann Grant are joined by two of Dassault Systèmes’ experts in model-based systems engineering (MBSE). Eran Reinshmidt brings 20 years’ experience in PLM and engineering to his role as a solution leader, and more recently he’s focused on consumer goods companies ranging from furniture to power tools to apparel and jewelry. Safae El Abkari holds a PhD in engineering services and combines her experience with both research and industry as a solution engineering consultant. Together, the group explores how MBSE makes sense for much more than just aerospace and defense (A&D).
Understanding MBSE
Safae starts by defining the four pillars, plus one, of MBSE as a way of explaining what MBSE is all about. The first is requirements, meaning system purpose, constraints, and alignment with regulations and the market. The second, structure, covers how it’s built, its components, subsystems, and relationships. Behavior or how the system functions over time is the third. “And the parametrics,” Safae explains, “which is the fourth pillar, capture the performance—physical or maybe engineering—constraint, and relationships between parameters. Let’s say, for example, for a vacuum cleaner, like the cost, the energy used, and so on.” She adds that an optional fifth pillar is safety, which involves evaluating risk and ensuring systems meet safety standards.
MBSE is for Product Complexity
Eran shares an example from the consumer goods world that illustrates how MBSE helps with the requirements pillar. For manufacturers, requirements usually start and unfortunately stay in a document—as lists in Word, Excel, PDF, or other format—even as they go through multiple revisions. The problem is that when you want to do something, you have to go back to the document to try to understand the requirement’s original intent. What MBSE can do is transform those requirements into something more structural in your system. It can turn them into “a kind of a data element inside your system that is connected to all the elements in the product that will be impacted by this requirement,” Eran says. “It’s the components, it’s the function of the product, all of those linked together that enable us to trace that the requirements we put in the beginning of the process were really validated at the end when the product is released.”
Eran also debunks the idea that product complexity only exists in A&D, noting that three elements in the consumer space are driving complexity for most manufacturers. Consumer trends are always changing. He says, “Now, everybody talks about sustainability. If you look at the products that you have, the companies need to publish the repairability index of the product, how much time they’re going to keep the pieces to replace some component, how well they can repair that product and until when.”
In addition, regulations continue to evolve, and competitors are always coming up with new functionality and features. To stay in the game, manufacturers must address all three. MBSE provides the necessary traceability for how requirements change throughout the process of developing and manufacturing a product. Jonathan notes, “Sometimes it’s not necessarily about just the total volume, but it’s about the pace and the change and the fact that these all interrelate and when they need to change sort of in a coordinated way.”
Jonathan points out that, like many things in engineering, the process of product development and manufacturing might be simple the first time you do it, before anything ever changes or goes wrong. But once things start to change, once you’re getting input from multiple sources, once you have to interface with other machines and software, the requirements explode. “You realize, I’ve got to have a better way of managing it than just collecting it and hoping I can put it together,” he says. That’s what MBSE does.
Safae, the undisputed queen of analogies, puts it another way: “MBSE is like having all musicians in an orchestra reading from the same sheet of music. Every discipline from software, electronics, mechanics knows exactly when to come in and how to contribute in the whole music and in their parts. That’s how MBSE keeps teams aligned and helps to accelerate the development of the process—and helps to keep the product development process harmonious.”
Learn More About the Value of MBSE for Any Manufacturer
The full podcast contains more discussion and details on a variety of topics, including how MBSE handles the fact that the customer’s requirement is different than the product development system’s requirement, how variant management and product-line engineering connect to MBSE, why Eran says MBSE can make sure you meet your primary goal of delivering value to customers, and more.
Be sure to check out Stay Sharp Episode 119: MBSE Isn’t Just for Rockets: Winning in Fast-Moving Consumer Markets and join us each week for a new podcast.
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