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Friday Afternoon Session Details

*Program subject to change

For Friday Afternoon's schedule click here

Authors	Mark Petrotta
Title	Augmented MBSE: Combining Model Based Systems Engineering with AI & Machine Learning
Session	Type: Featured Speaker Theme: Sigma Theta Mu Lecture Time: Friday, 01:00-01:55 PM Room: Salon A/B/C
Abstract	Growing complexity and scope of modeled systems has increased the difficulty for engineers to manually represent and interpret system engineering artifacts. Complex systems also have the interplay of many different factors, leading to difficult to predict "emergent phenomenons" that may not be identified by individual system engineers working with a model, nor the stakeholders reviewing the model. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning offer an data-centric approach to model development and validation, where past experiences can be used to inform and improve future designs. However, those computational decisions can be opaque, with the human engineer lacking shared intuition. This talk will explore the opportunities for artificial intelligence in the system engineering domain in ways that unite the unique capabilities of the systems engineer with the AI. This collaboration of human and machine intelligence is known as Augmented Intelligence. There is little doubt that systems engineering productivity could be improved with effective utilization of well-established AI techniques, such as machine learning, natural language processing, and statistical models. However, human engineers excel at many tasks that remain difficult for AIs, such as visual interpretation, abstract pattern matching, and drawing broad inferences based on experience. Combining the best of AI and human capabilities, along with effective human/machine interfaces and data visualization, offers the potential for orders-of-magnitude improvements in systems engineering capabilities. Augmented Intelligence promotes "team play" of human and machine intelligence. By effectively joining the human skills in pattern matching, unstructured data, and intuition with computational approaches that excel in domain search, systematic trade space exploration, and statistical evaluation, the combined "team" has been proven to be more effective than either in isolation. For instance, machine learning algorithms can process past designs, and visually present outcomes and the various tradeoffs. The human team can evaluate the domain space quickly, and watch for exceptional cases that might not be accurately handled by the machine. This talk will explore the potential, challenges, and requirements of implementing Augmented Intelligence in the systems engineering domain.

Authors	Bob Hill
Title	Architecting Resilient Systems With Design Structure Matrices and Network Topology Analysis
Session	Type: Presentation Theme: Architecting Time: Friday, 02:00-02:40 PM Room: Salon A/B/C
Abstract	The Design Structure Matrix (DSM) is a concise, intuitive and flexible tool for visualizing, analyzing and architecting complex networked systems. It has been increasingly important in both industry and academia, being the subject of over a thousand academic articles in the last fifteen years, according to a leading scholar in the field, who identifies network analysis as a particularly promising direction for further research. Similarly, resilience engineering has emerged in the last decade as an influential paradigm, treating system safety and performance as emergent properties of complex engineered systems, rather than linear functions of component parts. However, little work has addressed the intersection of DSM's and resilience, particularly with a view to architecting resilient systems via network analysis and, in particular, the concept of network resilience. This research seeks to leverage network topology concepts like homophily and clustering to develop heuristics and algorithms to design resilient system architectures. Real-world DSM's used in aerospace, healthcare, software engineering and other industries are analyzed for network statistics such as assortativity and transitivity, and tested for various measures of network reliability and robustness, such as flow-resilience, stability and percolation.

Authors	Axel Reichwein
Title	Modular Architecture Principles for Model-Based Systems Engineering
Session	Type: Presentation Theme: Architecting Time: Friday, 02:45-03:25 PM Room: Salon A/B/C
Abstract	Systems engineering is complex because it addresses cross-cutting concerns such as traceability, change management, and trade-off studies involving multiple engineering disciplines. Good systems engineering decisions can only be made based on accurate and complete information. However, engineering information is distributed across many different information silos. Typical engineering organizations have information silos amongst others for requirements, for software development, for simulation, and for 3D modeling. Data integration solutions exist but are limited to specific engineering disciplines, such as Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and Simulation and Process Data Management (SPDM). As each software application uses different data formats and different APIs, engineering organizations cannot efficiently analyze all their information as a whole. The data heterogeneity also increases the cost to keep different models of the same system under development consistent. As a result, systems engineering activities are not conducted efficiently, forcing organizations to take decisions without accurate information, thereby increasing the risk of project failures. Lack of information transparency also causes organizations to have to redo what was already done in the past, thereby wasting unnecessarily organization resources. This presentation will present modular architecture principles, independent of a particular solution, tool or standard, for making systems engineering activities more efficient in the long term. These principles will address multiple aspects requiring a common approach such as data identification, APIs, data formats, concepts for describing versions and configurations, protocols for version management of models, change events, definition of logical relationships across models, and data access rights. Challenges in supporting these principles or examples of standards already addressing these principles will be mentioned. This set of principles will help organizations understand the set of principles which need to be realized through standards to achieve a modular data management architecture for addressing cross-cutting concerns more efficiently. These principles could lead to a new form of Model-Based Systems Engineering called Network-Based Systems Engineering (NBSE).

Authors	David Walden
Title	Systems Engineering Philosophical Questions
Session	Type: Presentation Theme: Deeper Dives Time: Thursday, 02:00-02:40 PM Room: Salon D
Abstract	This presentation will introduce and discuss some of the philosophical questions that exist within the systems engineering community. Philosophical questions have no right answer, however, those with answers to the questions typically have very strong beliefs and usually consider the other side obviously wrong. In the United States, Coke vs. Pepsi is an example of a philosophical question – neither side is right, but the other side is obviously wrong. These types of questions exist in most countries and cultures, so it is no surprise that we as systems engineers also have some strongly held beliefs around these types of philosophical questions. This paper introduces four systems engineering philosophical questions we have encountered multiple times over our career: • Is Systems Engineering “earned” or “learned”? • Is Systems Architecting part of Systems Engineering or separate from Systems Engineering? • Are humans part of your System of Interest (SOI) or do they interface with your SOI? • Is cost a Technical Performance Measure? For each question, we provide background on the topic and provide some inputs to help the discussion move forward.

Authors	Randall Iliff
Title	Welcome to Reality - Surviving the Deadly Divide Between Pre-Sale and Post-Sale
Session	Type: Presentation Theme: Deeper Dives Time: Thursday, 02:45-03:25 PM Room: Salon D
Abstract	Together our Project Management (PM) and Systems Engineering (SE) communities have great models for how projects should work, and a wealth of good advice on how to make basically sound programs and portfolio management more effective. Unfortunately the business of selling development effort is often in conflict with the profession of delivering PM and SE services. We see this in the form of impossible deadlines, unrealistic promises, and estimates based on client budget rather than true cost of execution. In this session we’ll explain why this enormous problem continues to exist, show you how to assess the resulting risk on your own project / program / portfolio effort, and share proven strategies you can apply to minimize the impact. Every PM and SE, regardless of experience or current skill level, will benefit from this session.

Authors	Kevin Devaney
Title	Heuristics for Systems Engineering
Session	Type: Presentation Theme: Useful Enhancements Time: Friday, 02:00-02:40 PM Room: Salon E
Abstract	There is a need for useful heuristics within systems engineering. This presentation will define what heuristics are and why they are useful. There is a history of resisting the use of heuristics within the systems engineering profession, while other engineering disciplines make good use of heuristics. Different areas in systems engineering will be explored where heuristics can be advantageous, and the presentation will conclude with recommendations on collecting and disseminating systems engineering heuristics to benefit systems engineering.

Authors	Ibukun Phillips, Robert Kenley
Title	A SSM-TRIZ Methodology for Problem Structuring and Business Model Mapping
Session	Type: Presentation Theme: Useful Enhancements Time: Friday, 02:45-03:25 PM Room: Salon E
Abstract	Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) developed by Checkland has been so critical in tackling problem situations from a Systems perspective. This paper digs deeper down the hierarchy of systems approaches for problem solving by attempting to extend Checkland’s SSM principles towards resolving problems with conflicting/contradictory elements. However, SSM needs supporting methodologies to find superior solutions that overcome the need for a compromise or trade-off between the two elements. Hence, this work attempts to integrate the powerful benefits of TRIZ-based analysis into SSM in coming up with systemic resolution of business problems with conflicting sub-system elements. This paper recognizes the practical possibility of soft problems with conflictual relationship among their elements, compares and contrasts the strengths and weaknesses of SSM and TRIZ in problem structuring, and presents a collaborative SSM-TRIZ approach for problem structuring. Afterward, this paper pragmatically makes a case for the joint methodology by examining a business problem of developing a Professional Development platform for INCOSE. Furthermore, the applicability of this methodology is deployed in performing a business model mapping for the Professional Development Initiative problem.

Authors	Mike Celentano
Title	A Proven Process for Technolgy Pre-Development
Session	Type: Presentation Theme: Early Lifecycle Time: Friday, 04:00-04:40 PM Room: Salon A/B/C
Abstract	Often, there is a substantial gap between what academia and industry call a mature technology. This can result in product development teams being burdened with unknown technology risks leading to project cost overruns, schedule delays, and product feature reduction. Systems Engineering methodologies were applied to this problem at a medical device company which resulted in a new process for the pre-development of new technologies prior to project teams using them. This process was inspired by lean techniques, only adding work where there was value, and subtracting work where there was waste. Inspired by agile techniques, a review cadence was set to 1 month, where projects could be killed, shelved or continued. The process was implemented, refined and maintained successfully for about seven years. Over that time the budgeting process was also forced to become agile. The process also brought stakeholders together to discuss technology strategy, a forum that did not exist before. Success was measured by the many technologies that failed before projects used them, the few technologies that successfully went on into successful projects, as well as the positive change in company culture that resulted. Now the global organization has changed to achieve these same outcomes in a more permanent, mandatory and comprehensive way.

Authors	Kalpak Kalvit, Rajat Gupta, Dr. Hazim El-Mounayri
Title	Model Based Design for Intellectual Property
Session	Type: Presentation Theme: Early Lifecycle Time: Friday, 04:45-05:25 PM Room: Salon A/B/C
Abstract	Designing around existing Intellectual Property and avoiding infringement with existing patents is currently a very manual process that relies on browsing a large number of document-based patents. MBSE using SysML offers a model-based alternative that enables the automation of the process. As a first step, this work proposes the use of SysML based MBSE to convert document based patent representation to model-based representation. Requirements, functional (behavior), structure, and parametrics views are created to achieve a complete model-based representation of a new design or redesign that does not only replace document-based patent applications but provide a more powerful artifact that provides an unambiguous representation as well as supports the potential automation of patent infringement checking. The new approach is illustrated using the case of a washing machine.

Authors	Bill Schindel
Title	Patterns in the Public Square: Sharing Models to Streamline Innovation
Session	Type: Panel Theme: Innovation Time: Friday, 04:00-05:25 PM Room: Salon D
Abstract	Society benefits from innovation across the dimensions of life, including advancements in aviation and ground transportation, medicine and health care, production of food, energy, communication, and information systems, distribution of products and services, and other evolving systems. In many of these areas, society also depends upon effective regulation to protect us from undue risks involving safety, credibility, and other aspects. Sometimes we hear questions of whether the systems of regulation are effective in their balance of reward and risk to society. Not so well known are the collaborative efforts by regulators and technical professional societies (ASME, INCOSE, SAE, others) to advance new frameworks in which the expectations of regulators and innovators are recognized on behalf of the society both serve. This panel will discuss some contemporary efforts, beyond traditional standards-making of earlier generations, including the perspectives of engineering societies, regulators, and enterprises. The discussion will include consideration of how computational models are changing this environment, ask questions about the implications for future innovation, and address the practicality of sharing regulatory and industry models and patterns. This panel is part of a continuing conversation intended to engage more communities in these efforts.

Authors	Richard Martin
Title	Digital Roundtable Presentation 6: Harmonizing Worldviews of Smart Manufacturing
Session	Type: Presentation Theme: Digital & Manufacturing Time: Friday, 04:00-04:40 PM Room: Salon E
Abstract	Manufacturing has "SMART" bugs (that might cause a sickness) and around the world the symptoms and treatment are different. To combat continued divergence in concepts for smart manufacturing, to enhance opportunities in international commerce, and to benefit humanity and the planet, ISO and IEC initiated efforts to harmonize the variant approaches to modelling in the smart manufacturing domain and identify areas where new standardization projects are appropriate. Representatives from 14 nations are participating in two joint efforts of ISO TC184 – Automation systems and integration, and IED TC65 – Industrial-process measurement, control and automation: 1) development of a Smart Manufacturing Reference Model applicable across the globe, and 2) development of a Smart Manufacturing Standards Landscape cataloging standards that apply in the smart manufacturing context. This presentation focuses on the SE challenge of weaving together these rather different national emphases into a single coherent approach by carefully assessing the current situation, identifying expressed commonalities, and forming a meta-model approach to unify concepts and relationships for the Smart Manufacturing Reference Model.

Authors	Mohsen Moghaddam, C. Robert Kenley
Title	Digital Roundtable Presentation 4: A New Manufacturing Paradigm
Session	Type: Presentation Theme: Digital & Manufacturing Time: Friday, 04:45-05:25 PM Room: Salon E
Abstract	The technology “push” driven by the Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems along with the demand “pull” for smarter and more individualized products (and services) calls for a new manufacturing paradigm that is more distributed, collaborative, and capable of fast and on-demand reconfiguration. Micro-services will be discussed as the key enabler for cyber-collaboration, reconfigurable assembly, and customer-centric design and manufacturing. Insights from interviews with seven experts in the field of smart and service-oriented manufacturing will be discussed, highlighting major gaps, requirements, and opportunities in terms of six propositions. Potential directions for research will be proposed, with specific focus on ontology and mathematical formalism of manufacturing services, service optimization, description, composition, and matching.

For questions and comments, please contact:
GLRC2018 Technical Program Chair
Chris Hoffman

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