Synergizing model‐based systems engineering, modularity, and software container concepts to manage obsolescence

Abstract

Costs to replace obsolete parts are estimated to exceed $10 billion annually for military expenditures. 1 Other industries experience high costs related to obsolete parts as well. [2][3][4][5] Synergies between Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and modular design concepts should be leveraged to reduce those costs early in the design process. To date, obsolescence management, MBSE, and modularity have been studied, advanced, and presented in a mostly disjunct manner. Consequently, work to synergize these areas specifically to mitigate obsolescence impacts is lacking. The research presented herein illuminates that the untapped synergy at the nexus of obsolescence management, MBSE, and modular design can be leveraged to enhance strategic management of obsolescence. Borrowing from the modular software engineering "container" concept 6 , the MBSE container modeling approach presented provides systems engineers, architects, and designers with a novel method to influence the system design by minimizing the number of system modules affected by obsolescence. By applying this model-based strategic obsolescence management approach early in the system architecting and design stages, system engineering teams can reduce the associated complexity, lifecycle costs, and risk of obsolete parts replacement. K E Y W O R D Sobsolescence management, SEE05 requirements elicitation and management, SEE24 modelbased systems engineering (MBSE) 1 A complex redesign is defined as one that "affects assemblies beyond the obsolete item's next higher assembly and may require that higher-level assemblies, software, and interfaces also be changed". 8

Coping Asynchronous Modular Product Design by Modelling a Systems-in-System

“…In addition to this, attention must be paid to ensure that there is a common knowledge base from which the different architectures are derived. For this, systems engineering can provide useful insights and tools to more accurately expose and map these linkages (Walden et al, 2015;Morgan et al, 2021). Additionally, there is a need to identify and research module drivers at discipline level and linkages between different disciplin-specific components.…”

“…For this purpose, a further literature review on discipline-specific modularization was conducted. As a result, various sources, such as Morgan et al (2021), Campusano et al (2021) or Liu et al (2021), prove that modular design is also considered in software engineering, mentioned here as a representative of other development disciplines, due to limitations of this paper. Thus, it can be concluded that there is at least a multi-disciplinary modular design in the conceptualization of products.…”

Risk‐based approach for managing obsolescence for automation systems in heavy industries

“…For all of these historical projects, only reactive obsolescence management strategies were employed. Reactive actions seek to resolve an obsolescence problem once obsolescence has occurred and impacts the system 19 . In other words, reactive obsolescence management only generally occurs once the repeated failure of an obsolescent component is causing system downtime, and lost revenue.…”

“…Reactive actions seek to resolve an obsolescence problem once obsolescence has occurred and impacts the system. 19 In other words, reactive obsolescence management only generally occurs once the repeated failure of an obsolescent component is causing system downtime, and lost revenue. The upgrade from an obsolescent component to a more modern component could therefore be justified based on economics.…”

Datasheet: where is requirements engineering gone? A case in Benchmarking Mobile Robotics

“…If system definition ambiguities can hardly be measured, its decrease can be measured. The adoption of our method can result in mastering of current expenses on concept exploration, direct generation of user manual automatically generated from the validation datasheet, maybe even obsolescence management, following [22] adding multi physical dimensions to their claims.…”