Methodology for Holistic Reference Modeling in Systems Engineering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive methodology for describing reference models in systems engineering, enabling end-to-end traceability and focused development across multiple views and levels, demonstrated through a smart robot example.

Contribution

It presents a holistic approach to reference modeling that integrates various system aspects and supports transferability and performance consideration from the early design stages.

Findings

Enhanced traceability of system capabilities and performance parameters.

Improved focus in development by considering constraints early.

Demonstrated applicability on a smart robot development case.

Abstract

Models in face of increasing complexity support development of new systems and enterprises. For an efficient procedure, reference models are adapted in order to reach a solution with les overhead which covers all necessary aspects. Here, a key challenge is applying a consistent methodology for the descriptions of such reference designs. This paper presents a holistic approach to describe reference models across different views and levels. Modeling stretches from the requirements and capabilities over their subdivision to services and components up to the realization in processes and data structures. Benefits include an end-to-end traceability of the capability coverage with performance parameters considered already at the starting point of the reference design. This enables focused development while considering design constraints and potential bottlenecks. We demonstrate the approach on the example of the development of a smart robot. Here, our methodology highly supports transferability of designs for the development of further systems.