The automation professionals tasked with designing the production system for a new product often find themselves waiting for the final, locked product design, even as the calendar counts down to the committed date for start of production. When their R&D teammates release the locked design, commonly referred to as “throwing it over the wall,” they may find that one or more parameters have changed significantly from the original design guidance. This creates losses due to rework and schedule delays that could have been prevented. The best way to eliminate these losses is not to remove the wall, but to replace it with a system model. In many siloed innovation processes, design data is spread out over tens or hundreds of unconnected documents, in multiple repositories.
Conversely, a model-based digital innovation process is built around a unified system model. The model becomes the single source of truth so that all technical contributors to a project are working from the same data and the same set of assumptions to satisfy the same set of requirements. This innovation process, known as model-based systems engineering (MBSE), was developed primarily in the defense and aerospace industries to reduce costs and schedule in the acquisition of complex vehicle and weapons systems. The process is rapidly seeing wider adoption in the automotive, industrial equipment and consumer packaged goods industries where the products, and their production systems, are no less complex and the competition of speed to market is just as demanding.
In MBSE, the primary artifact is the system model, almost always created with the industry standard modelling language, SysML. Using a SysML-compliant tool allows integration with the full suite of digital design and manufacturing tools offered on one platform. A server-hosted system model is available to all stakeholders and allows real time collaboration across organizations and locations. In addition to eliminating the losses caused by a siloed innovation process, there are many reasons for accelerating the adoption of MBSE, including the following:
- Models provide traceability across all levels of design abstraction from the conceptual model to the physical system.
- Verification testing becomes a constant activity throughout the design phase instead of a catch-all at the end of construction.
- System models facilitate the ability to automatically conduct trade studies of multiple design options to determine the optimal solution.
- Design reviews are conducted entirely within the model, eliminating the need to create separate review documents and the effort to re-incorporate feedback from the review.
- Once a system design is captured in a model it
- Engineering costs and schedules as well as maintenance and support costs are greatly reduced.
This allows detailed analysis of design consistency, completeness and correctness and simplifies analyzing the impact of design changes.
Testing with the tool’s built-in simulation engine or linking the model with more complex multi-physics simulation tools helps identify problems and create solutions earlier in the process, resulting in significant cost savings.
may be re-used again and again, for example re-applying a plant standard control platform across many different production systems.
Similarly, product line engineering, or creating a portfolio of products based on the same underlying design and production systems, is simplified using a model-based process.
Consider moving to a model-based innovation process to break down the walls between teams and improve traceability, costs, scheduling and optimal design selection.
