Introduction to the modeling and simulation-based systems engineering handbook

Abstract

Systems engineering—“... an interdisciplinary collaborative approach to derive, evolve, and verify a life-cycle balanced system solution which satisfies customer expectations and meets public acceptability”(IEEE 1998, p. 11)—has been taught and practiced for several decades, and a body of knowledge (http://www.sebokwiki.org/) has been developed to share and centralize experiences and successful practices. However, despite the fact that they are applying systems engineering processes, many projects still overrun their budgets, fail to deliver in time, and sometimes even do not deliver something really useful or do not even meet the requirements. Many team members continued to work in silos of domain excellence, and the systems engineering processes did not connect the team members as intended. New emerging ideas were gradually introduced under the efforts of model-based systems engineering (MBSE) (Estefan 2008; Wymore 1993), bringing a significant improvement with respect to the aforementioned shortcomings. With MBSE, a common model becomes a centerpiece of the engineering process. This common model is used to communicate with various stakeholders, users in different phases of the life cycle, and in particular team members of the systems engineering team in charge of defining, developing, operating, maintaining, upgrading, and finally retiring the system. The model is rooted in system requirements and is modified step-by-step through analysis and realworld constraints to become a blueprint of the real system.