Abstract. An analysis of perspectives for "capability engineering" has been conducted by the INCOSE UK Capability Working Group (CWG). This paper is a continuation of this study led by the CWG ontology work stream that aims to develop a single shared ontology for the concept of capability engineering to enable semantic interoperability and to support a formal and explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation. Case study material from the different domains of rail, defence and information services was used. The ontology development was executed in three phases; (1) pre-analysis, (2) ontology modelling and (3) post-analysis. The pre-analysis involved literature reviews, requirements specification, systems engineering process utilisation; and resource identification i.e. examination of the case study material. The ontology modelling phase comprised information extraction and classification in addition to modelling and code representation using a mark-up tool, MS Excel and Protégé. The post-analysis involved validation workshops through using expert focus groups.

Sharing design information during the systems engineering activities on large international projects within virtual enterprises faces many challenges, amongst them is working with heterogeneous sets of systems engineering tools.

No abstract

The System Engineering Design Methodologies (SEDM) project is concerned with potential avenues to exploit the AP-233 system engineering data exchange standard. The project is a joint venture between the System Engineering and Evaluation Centre of the University of South Australia and BAE SYSTEMS Australia. The work described in this paper covers the design and implementation of an import interface from the AP-233 data model to DOORS. The project showed that AP-233 is an effective medium for tool independent transfer of systems engineering information.

Abstract. Contemporary systems engineering developments are frequently global in scope, and 'distributed' in both graphical and temporal senses, involving many different design and analysis tools, across systems engineering and various specialist engineering disciplines. Currently there is little interoperability between these suites of tools. This situation can have real stagnating effects on systems engineering activities, and considerable detrimental economic, productivity and quality consequences. Neutral data exchange is one solution to this problem. The AP-233 systems engineering data interoperability standard will be fundamentally important, making global systems engineering in heterogeneous design environments possible. The aims, approach and results to date of the SEDRES-2 project, the most recent AP-233 data model, and the relationship to other areas of work, are described. Several business scenarios where AP-233 has the potential to make a significant contribution are explained. A mature semantic-level systems engineering interoperability standard is an essential enabler and a significant invigorator to distributed systems engineering.