Model-based systems engineering for heavy equipment

MBSE helps heavy equipment manufacturers work systematically, continuously focused on the requirements, starting from a clear architecture with well-defined interfaces, so everyone understands their role in the wider picture, avoiding surprises at the integration gateways. This approach also helps them drive collaboration between all product development stakeholders, including partners and suppliers. When connected through MBSE, everyone works based on shared, up-to-date information. This automatically leads to higher efficiency, reduced risk of mistakes, and improved product quality. An MBSE approach also presents direct opportunities to work on aspects like reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS), as well as sustainability. Its advantages go beyond individual development programs. MBSE also helps you share model-based descriptions of systems and subsystems across product groups and capture best practices that ultimately promote the reuse of systems and concepts across development programs, while driving standardization. This makes you more efficient as an organization, ultimately reducing time-to-market and innovating faster.

If you want to embrace an MBSE approach as an organization, you need a product lifecycle management (PLM) system to facilitate that. But the goal of MBSE is not only to track every individual product throughout its entire useful life, as a PLM system does. With MBSE, you can focus on the interaction between subsystems at their interfaces, making sure you won’t have individual stakeholders introduce mistakes that are expensive to fix when they surface later in the development process. MBSE also takes things more globally, on the level of your organization. You can look for opportunities to improve quality and reliability and reduce cost across programs – not just for every individual product. This can be achieved by capturing best practices, standardizing processes, and focusing on commonality and reuse.

Model-based engineering (MBE) refers to adopting a simulation-based approach to design and refining products or components. With model-based systems engineering (MBSE), you also focus on the integration of subsystems in the overall product, problems that may be introduced at the interfaces, and on the interaction between systems and their surroundings. Looking at your design and engineering problem from a systems perspective rather than just by simulation is important when you design today’s innovative heavy equipment with a combination of multiple disciplines. Mechanics, electrical and electronic systems, and software are often connected to other systems in their surroundings. During heavy equipment design and engineering, the work of many different teams must come together at some point which is where mistakes are easily introduced such as misalignment, wrong data, and more.

To deliver innovative heavy equipment, MBSE has become indispensable as product design is the collective work of many departments. When you combine mechanics with electrical and electronics systems and software to the extent your customers expect today, deploying an industry-proven thorough digitalization of your processes is the only way to stay competitive. Otherwise, you will never be able to master the complexity that complex equipment brings, let alone consider all the interactions your machine has with other systems in its surroundings. Making changes at the core of what you are doing is challenging and can initially add to everyone's workloads. But this investment is necessary at your pace, and on the scale of your capabilities and needs. The best place to start is with a maturity assessment in collaboration with a dedicated and experienced partner, followed by jointly defining and implementing your unique digital road map. This approach will address your most pressing challenges and align with your strategy for maximum benefits.