A Model-Based Method for System Reconfiguration

Abstract

System Reconfiguration is essential in complex systems management, as it is an enabler of system adaptability with regard to system evolutions. System evolutions have to be managed to ensure system effectiveness and efficiency through its whole life cycle, particularly when it comes to complex systems that take years of development and dozens of years of usage. In this context, system reconfiguration ensures system operation and maintains system “ilities” (e.g., reliability, availability, maintainability, testability, and safety). This research has been conducted in the context of a large international aerospace, space, ground transportation, defense, and security company. This research aims at supporting system reconfiguration during operations. Within current industrial practices, the development of reconfiguration support is challenging as it requires integrating data related to observations (from operations) and system design (from engineering). More specifically, there is a need to integrate and link relevant reconfiguration data concerning the system objectives, operational context, and level of functioning. This paper proposes integrating and linking this fundamental data within a reconfiguration method. MBSysRec is a multidisciplinary method that involves configuration generation and a multi-criteria decision-making method for configuration evaluation and selection to support system reconfiguration during operations. The method has been implemented on two projects based on historical data. Resulting configurations have been discussed and assessed by system reconfiguration experts. A SAR case study is used to demonstrate the method. The method is proven effective for finding relevant system configurations for reconfiguring the already deployed system to achieve search and rescue missions.