LOTAR Model Based Systems Engineering Workgroup

This webpage introduces the reader to the Model Based Systems Engineering Workgroup (MBSE WG) that was launched in April 2018. The purpose of this WG is to define a set of LOTAR standards, shared by international aerospace and defence industries for the long term preservation of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) Information, taking into account the consistency with the other relevant LOTAR parts. Although these standards may apply to other industries, the definition is a critical part of the type design of aerospace and defense systems and is subject to the same long term retention requirements as other parts and features

The MBSE WG will develop capabilities for archiving, retrieval and reuse of valuable model based systems engineering assets. The information below describes:

• Goals and activities
• Business requirements and associated use cases and test cases
• Timeframe for development
• Links to related standards and organization

Goals and Objectives

The objective of the workgroup is to develop, publish and maintain standards-based mechanisms for archiving and retrieval of Model Based Systems Engineering information that can be read and reused throughout the product life cycle, independent of changes in the Information Technology (IT) application environment originally used for creation.

The focus is on the long term preservation of the MBSE inputs, results and metadata for the design, manufacturing and support of aerospace products.

Business requirements and use cases

Model-based systems engineering represents system-descriptive and analytical models that are explicit, coherent, and consistent. It is the evolution from low-fidelity document representations to high-fidelity, rich representations. Although traditional representations like documentation are also included in this proposal, the fundamental deliverables are models and persistent relationships or links.

The industry is in a phase of transition where many of the traditional documentation deliverables are best represented by models. The development and utilization of data and tool standards is also in transition resulting in widespread variation in how the models are created and preserved. This project will accelerate the development of common principles and supporting applications needed for implementation.

The LOTAR capabilities are being developed to address use cases driven by business needs expressed by stakeholders such as regulatory bodies, corporate policies, and contractual requirements, and needs commonly encountered in the regular process of engineering products and providing customer support.

These include legal items such as

• product liability
• product certification
• incident investigations

and business items such as

• enable long term access to engineering data for addressing customer queries
• evaluate new operating conditions and mission requirements
• modify existing products
• develop derivatives of existing products
• evaluate damage that might have occurred to a product
• contingencies for part obsolescence
• knowledge capture

LOTAR 5xx standards for Model based systems Engineering

The planned initial NAS / EN 9300-5XX standards for the Long Term Archiving of model based systems engineering Information will be organized into the following family of Parts:

Associated ISO 10303 Information Models

LOTAR standards do not define specific information models. They rely closely on the ISO 10303 Application Protocols, based on the modular architecture, which ensures the consistency of the information models subsets, common to several ISO 10303 standards.

The LOTAR P5xx family will be based on:

• ISO STEP AP233 “Systems Engineering”
• ISO STEP AP243 “Modelling and Simulation information in a collaborative Systems Engineering Context (MoSSEC)”

Related standardization projects and Organizations

MBSE information covers a wide range of information types. Consequently, there is a wide range of related projects and organizations.

• ISO STEP AP209 Ed.2 “Multi-disciplinary analysis and design” – www.ap209.org
• ISO STEP AP233 “Systems Engineering”
• ISO STEP AP242 “Managed Model-based 3D Engineering” – www.ap242.org
• ISO STEP AP243 “Modeling and Simulation information in a collaborative Systems Engineering Context – MoSSEC” – http://www.mossec.org/
• FMI, “Functional Mockup Interface”, SSP “System Structure Parameterization” – https://www.modelica.org/
• Modelica Language Specification (equations for physical systems) – https://www.modelica.org/
• OMG , W3C , and OASIS standards (ReqIF, SysML, XMI, UML, OWL, OSLC)

Relationship to other LOTAR projects and/or LOTAR parts

• Engineering Analysis and Simulation Workgroup ( EAS WG )
• Product Data Management Workgroup ( PDM WG )

Relationship of projects to activities of other national or international bodies

• PDES – prostep ivip – AFNET, Process-Tool Teams and Interoperability Forums
• INCOSE: a variety of working groups
• NAFEMS: Systems Modeling and Simulation Team
• Aerospace and Defense PLM Action Group: MBSE WG

Way of working – meetings and teleconferences

• The MBSE Working Group holds bi-weekly web meetings / conference calls on Wednesdays from 15:30 to 17:00 (Central European Time) / 06:30 to 08:00 (US Pacific Time)
• It also holds specific working sessions during the quarterly LOTAR Workshops.

Contacts

Please address your message to LOTAR-MBSE(at)lists(dot)purdue(dot)edu if you would like more information about the team, workgroup activities and output, or to discuss participating in the workgroup. The team co-chairs are:

Workgroup Leader Americas

Juan Carlos Mendo
The Boeing Company

Workgroup Leader Europe

Kyle Hall
Airbus