Presented at MODELS 2021 Industry Days by István Ráth and Enrique Krajmalnik

1. The Genesis of Holistic
Systems Design
Completeness and Consistency Management of the Digital Thread
Enrique Krajmalnik, Zuken
Istvan Rath, IncQuery Labs
2021 MODELS Industry Days
Copyright © 2021 by Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath.

2. The MBSE Value Chain
• The promised benefits of MBSE
• Improved communication
• Fewer defects / higher quality
• To improve not just quality of SE, but the overall quality and value of
engineering across the organization
• Increased efficiency
• Better collaboration
• Systems architecture as the “single source of truth”
• Silos remain disconnected even though the goal of MBSE is to
connect silos
• Closed product ecosystems
• Lack of good APIs and interchange formats
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

3. The impact of disconnected silos
• SE remains an isolated discipline
• One of many silos next to mechanical, electrical, ALM/PLM, …
• As disconnected silos, what is the interface between architecture and
disciplines?
• It is often a document produced from an MBSE tool
• Consequence: data reentry and/or copy-paste
• No guarantee of completeness, correctness and
consistency
• A lot of time and money is wasted!
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

4. Example: transition to detailed design
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Transition to Detailed Design
V-Model
2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

5. The silo problem of “transition to detailed design”
Video Drone Model Cable/Harness
Systems Engineering Detailed Design
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SysML extension for ECAD (Electrical Computer-aided Design)
(modeling-languages.com)
2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

6. The 3C Challenge:
Building High Quality Model of Models
• Completeness
• Make sure all my components and functions exist both in SE and ECAD
• Correctness
• If component A has is of type “PCB” (in SE)
è it should be mapped to a PCB device (in ECAD)
• Consistency
• If a connection transfers an item between components A and B (in SE)
è there is a wire carrying the corresponding signal between devices A and B
(in ECAD)
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

7. What causes 3C’s?
• Input error
• Forgetting/missing something
• Copy/paste error
• Incorrect mappings
• Roundtripping gone bad
• Change
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

8. Our take
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Discipline-specific, automated
bridge tools that create the
digital thread
Overlaid layer of digital thread
analytics that can expose parts
of the digital thread depending
on the need/use-case
Vendor-neutral federated
toolchain
2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath
• Provide the right data at the right time
• Automatically transfer engineering data
• Improve efficiency and reduce errors
• Create digital traceability
• Maintain a single source of truth
• Ensure that the architecture remains relevant

9. The E3.GENESYS Connector
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Video Drone Model Cable/Harness Topology Editor
Systems Engineering Detailed Design
Transfer Logical
Architecture
Diagrams
Requirements
Parameters
Verification Requirements
Expose the Model
Design Envelope
2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

10. Building the Electrical Viewpoint
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• Components, signals, and ports
are analyzed
• Signals are of type electrical
• Ports have pin:signal assignments,
part number, or are of type
electrical
• Components are of type ECU, PCB
or are part of an electrical signal
2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

11. The E3.GENESYS Interface
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1
1 Navigate the model repository
2 Connect the model, map elements, and load into E3
2
3
3 View model details to provide context, criteria, constraints,
etc...
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4 Provide feedback on observed parameters to verify back to
the architecture
2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

12. Video demonstration of the GENESYS.E3 Connector
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

13. Our take
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Discipline-specific, automated
bridge tools that create the
digital thread
Overlaid layer of digital thread
analytics that can expose parts
of the digital thread depending
on the need/use-case
Vendor-neutral federated
toolchain
2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath
• Single source of truth is NOT a single model
è it is the ”model of models”
• Digital thread analytics can
• look at links AND look into models
• Semantically analyze both
• Holistic à adaptable to all tools in the
toolchain

14. NETWORK.
LEARN.
INNOVATE.
© Zuken 2016
©2018 Zuken
© Zuken 2016
©2020 Zuken
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Zuken proprietary information. Forwarding beyond the intended recipient(s) is not permitted.
Zuken proprietary information. Forwarding beyond the intended recipient(s) is not permitted.
• Efficiently extracts your engineering data from proprietary silos
IncQuery Suite
Digital Thread Analytics
• Helps you create detailed validation reports and analysis
dashboards that integrate seamlessly with modern, web-based tools
• Creates a unified, searchable, and analyzable representation of
your complete digital thread: the knowledge graph
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

15. The IncQuery Suite Connects to:
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

16. • Integrated with
• the popular Jupyter ecosystem through
open-source Python libraries and the
OpenAPI interface
• documentation management systems
such as the OpenMBEE View Editor or
Atlassian Confluence
• Easy-to-use analyst workbench to manage automated validation and
analysis reports
• Supports standards such as SysML, UPDM, UAF
• as well as open-source libraries
(SAIC Digital Engineering Validation Tool)
• Custom rules can be defined by queries (e.g. SPARQL, ElasticSearch)
• E.g. GENESYS.E3 naming consistency rule ààà
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

17. 3C Analysis for the GENESYS.E3 Connector
• Step 1: Initial mapping performed with GENESYS.E3 Connector
• Result:
• Partially complete
(Subsystem mapping is disabled
by default)
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“If a connection transfers an item between components A and B (in SE)
è there is a wire carrying the corresponding signal between
devices A and B (in ECAD)”
• Inconsistent signal allocations
2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

18. Step 2: Adding missing wiring and signal allocation
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

19. 3C Analysis
• Step 3: Re-run the validation
• Result: One pair of allocation problems is resolved
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

20. § Historical analytics as the “progress bar” of a complex engineering process
– Model Integrator / Reviewer can follow the “Transition to Detailed Design” process on a version
control dashboard
– Track progress via KPIs as the mapping completeness is improved
– Identify and fix correctness issues quickly
Progress tracking
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath

21. Takeaways
• Disconnected / loosely connected silos are a significant problem today -
breaking the MBSE Value Chain
• We proposed a conceptual framework to fix this problem
• Purpose-built light-weight bridges
• Digital Thread Analytics to tackle the 3C Challenge
• Applicable to other tools / scenarios as well!
• Check out the next talk by Daniel Siegl on MBSE and DevOps, featuring Git,
LemonTree, and the IncQuery Suite!
• https://www.zuken.com/us/product/model-based-wire-harness-design/
• https://incquery.io
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2021 MODELS Industry Days. The Genesis of Holistic Systems Design - Enrique Krajmalnik and Istvan Rath