Generic claims are often made of the benefits of more tightly coupling Systems Engineering practices with those of detailed design. In the context of the respective domains’ software tools, this typically correlates to tighter coupling and integration between Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and detailed design tools such as electrical computer aided design (ECAD), mechanical CAD (MCAD), software integrated development environments (IDEs), etc. Often the problem is approached from the standpoint of simply developing point-to-point connectors or Digital Thread connections and gluttonously passing packages of data back and forth without first stopping to ask the questions of, “why are we connecting the tools?;” “what specific information do we need to answer our specific questions?;” “where is the authoritative source of truth;” and “how do we manage changes across the connected tool chain?” Digital tool-to-tool interoperability is just one factor in this complex problem. Complicating this further is that often the personnel from each engineering domain come to a project team with distinctly different backgrounds, perspectives, training, and assumptions about what the other domains and disciplines do and provide in terms of value to the team. Geographical and industry differences further complicate the problem.

This presentation will review several current approaches to system-level and detailed design tool integration and assess where there are opportunities to improve the value and efficiency of these connections so that we can evolve from simply transferring data because we can – to transporting precisely specified packets of information, no more or less, to an intended recipient so that the end consumer can ultimately gain knowledge and wisdom and apply that to making better design decisions. As customer-facing enterprises, if our singular goal and focus is to always deliver tangible, lovable products and services on time and on budget to end customers, we cannot settle for less.

Speaker Biography

Brian is Vitech’s Chief Innovation Officer, where he is responsible for managing the Product Strategy department and the company’s product portfolio roadmap. Brian has 20 years of experience in the aerospace, optical observatory, and defense system domains. Brian has held senior systems engineering, management, and leadership roles at the United States Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP), World View Enterprises and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). He also worked at SpaceX in their early days where he was responsible for the Falcon 1 ground support systems. Brian has diverse experience with several MBSE tools and modeling methodologies.