In Stay Sharp Episode 96, MBSE Unveiled: What’s Next for System Design, co-hosts Jonathan Scott and Juliann Grant welcome returning guest David Long, founder of Vitech and current Director of Strategic Integration for the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). The trio continue the conversation they started in Stay Sharp Episode 92, Unpacking Digital Twins Series: MBSE, focusing this time on the history, scope, and possible future of MBSE in practice.
Why MB if You’re Doing SE?
David starts by explaining the evolution of MBSE from early methods of systems engineering. When manufacturers were dealing with electro-mechanical technologies, “The mental models we had in capturing those in documents was sufficient,” he says. “When you got into the 1980s and particularly the 1990s, and you saw the rise of what were termed software-centric systems … the complexity goes way up.” Between that complexity, the breakdown in dialogue between systems engineers and software engineers that was observed, and the mismatch in notation and terminology between technologies, the situation was ripe for a tool to align everything and everyone.
Jonathan makes the point that MBSE democratizes systems engineering to more disciplines. What you had in systems engineering was, he says, “A lot of implicit models that experts and people formally trained knew how to make, those mental models. Now you can actually show them to people who are not systems engineers, have them understand them and learn.” David agrees and expands the concept to entire industries, explaining that by structuring and adopting a common language, the barrier of entry to systems engineering is lowered. He adds, “There’s often an analogy drawn that says, if you want to understand what MBSE is, go back and look at the evolution of mechanical design from drafting to CAD. MBSE is CAD for systems engineers.”
Hot MBSE Topics
One caution David offers about MBSE is not focusing on the tools (MB) at the expense of the work (SE). “If you’re not doing good systems engineering, if you’re not understanding what systems engineering is trying to do, doing it faster, doing it better … it doesn’t matter,” he says. “The way I like to say it is, the tool handles the perspiration, freeing the engineer for the inspiration.” Another potentially freeing technology he sees is sees artificial intelligence (AI). He suggests turning AI loose on structured knowledge about systems—especially your systems (while maintaining security)—and seeing what next-level capability you can accelerate or generate.
The trio discuss other important topics and perspectives globally for the digital transformation of engineering, starting with cloud. Following up on Jonathan’s point, David says, “Democratization is about access to knowledge, access to capabilities. As long as these tools are locked up on desktops, that’s a limiter for the enterprise, it’s a limiter for the collaborating enterprises. Cloud is a big part of it, as these organizations make their knowledge, their capability, more accessible.”
Systems modeling language, or SysML, version 2 is of critical importance for manufacturers’ digital transformations. It’s not only a rearchitected take on SysML v1, based on the last 18 years of lessons learned, but it also finally turns the view outward, as well as inward. “How do we make that knowledge available to non-system engineers, to other engineering tools through standardized approaches?” he asks. “V2 is this enabler at a technology level that underpins the journey to AI, the journey to digital thread, the journey to digital engineering. And so it is probably the biggest dialogue point in model-based systems engineering these days.”
That shift in perspective from inward to outward looking is the next step in transforming the engineering lifecycle and enterprise, as well as how good, modern MBSE practices enable the end-to-end capability to transform need into business value. This is where MBSE and PLM start to find common ground. “PLM says, the center of all knowledge for the engineering lifecycle is effectively the BOM. If you asked a systems engineer, they would say the integrating technical connective tissue for the engineering lifecycle is the architecture,” David explains. “It may be that the architecture in the early engineering phases is what binds us together, and that’s represented now in an MBSE knowledge map. As it begins to mature and firm up, then it’s probably in the BOM and PLM.”
Learn More About Where MBSE Came From and Is Headed
The full podcast contains more discussion and details on a variety of topics, including what leaders, organizations, and even software vendors you might want to follow for new thinking and developments in MBSE; why David feels having a community of practice is essential for systems engineers; the benefits and hurdles ahead for the industry in adopting SysML v2; and more.
Be sure to check out Stay Sharp Episode 96: MBSE Unveiled: What’s Next for System Design and join us each week for a new podcast.
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