The enabling role of Configuration Management for the Systems Engineering of tomorrow's complex Systems and Systems of Systems

Abstract

Times to market for complex Systems and Systems of Systems(SoS) in the aerospace and defence industries shall be reduced, whereas both customer expectations and technology evolutions are increasing at an exponential rate. As the total life cycle of complex Systems and SoS frequently spans across several decades, the customer expectations and market conditions are highly likely to evolve, thus their development needs to be kept in line with evolving business cases. Systems Engineering(SE) and Configuration Management(CM) need to work even more closely together in order to address this. CM as a discipline is essential for this as the key discipline for establishing traceability and controlling baseline evolutions and iterations between all the relevant pieces of information resulting from the related system lifecycle processes. This paper provides an outlook on how CM may enable SE of tomorrow's complex Systems and SoS, including some key recommendations and related challenges.

Extending the scope of configuration management for the development and life cycle support of systems of systems—An ontology‐driven framework applied to the Enceladus Submarine Exploration Lander

“…CM traditionally focuses on the product breakdown structure of the SoI, ie, the hardware breakdown structure, identifying the related CIs and then managing changes and the status accounting for these 4 . Today SE focuses on the management of baselines and managing these baselines in configuration 5 . Figure 1 contrasts the two different viewpoints of SE versus CM in terms of configuration.…”

“…Hence, current SE and CM need to evolve toward more agile and dynamic ways of managing SE data and their traceability in light of the current and future challenges we are facing in developing and improving complex systems and SoS. In particular, CM, as an enabler of future SE/MBSE, must evolve toward more flexible and highly automated activities that cover a wider scope of CIs than is currently the case 5,26 …”

“…D'Souza et al identified the following axes of necessary improvement for both SE and CM in order to enable adequate support for the development of tomorrow's complex systems and SoS: 5 the extension of CM & SE along the full life cycle;the extension of CM across all elements of the SoI;tailoring and automation of CM; andtraceability and reusability across multiple programs.…”

“…In any case, the traditional document baselines are no longer sufficient. If we are to achieve the targets set by D'Souza et al, 5 we need to extend the CI concept to include other key SE/MBSE data, which become the artifacts of the new SE data baselines, namely: requirements (functional and performance, as well as nonfunctional or quality requirements) and sets thereof, as well as related data (including knowledge items underlying these such as quantifiable value objectives from the application of value engineering); V&V objectives, means and results, and other related artifacts such as information regarding test software, simulators, etc., ie, V&V‐related data; architecture/design artifacts and related data (model entities and elements thereof that vary depending on the framework selected by the system architect); process artifacts and related data, which is especially important for the industry where processes are used as means of compliance or where a certain process maturity, eg, in terms of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), 34 is required either by contract or industry regulation; product artifacts and related data (eg, in terms of design models, materials, environmental conditions, hardware, software, etc. ); and enabling process/product artifacts and related data (eg, in terms of environmental aspects, industrial system, manufacturing and assembly processes, people or job profiles and qualifications).…”