Goal modelling in aeronautics: Practical applications for aircraft and manufacturing designs

Traditional aircraft development follows a sequential approach: the aircraft is designed first, followed by the industrial system. This approach limits the industrial system’s performance due to constraints imposed by the pre-defined aircraft design. Collaborative approaches, however, advocate for simultaneous design of different products to create new opportunities. Within a project focused on co-designing aircraft and their industrial systems, we put goal modelling into practice to gain a comprehensive understanding of the objectives driving each system’s design and their interdependencies. The intention was to develop an approach for actively involving domain experts, even those lacking prior knowledge of Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE).

This paper provides a detailed account of the iterative process employed to develop and refine our approach. For each iteration, we describe the organisation of modelling sessions with experts, the resulting models, and the collected feedback. We also report on the overall approach’s reception from both industry experts and academic participants. Furthermore, we highlight recommendations and research challenges that emerged from the encountered difficulties during the iterative process, suggesting avenues for further investigation and improvement.