The number of products with embedded computer systems continues to grow, as does the expectation for product connectivity (the Internet of Things). The increased complexity of such systems requires new ways to design, engineer, and simulate. Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary approach to building complex systems. It is based on systems thinking principles, which pays close attention to logistics, requirements, testing and evaluation, team coordination, and other disciplines. It is an approach rooted in work processes, best practices, and risk management. Systems engineering ensures all likely aspects of a project or system are considered, and integrated into a whole. The more complex the product, the more its development will benefit from systems engineering.
Systems engineering is often introduced to an organization as a way to reduce or eliminate communications barriers between teams. It also drives the use of multi-discipline simulation and modeling as a top-down engineering approach, and it serves to link engineering to business requirements.
The Benefits of Systems Engineering
Our approach to systems engineering gives your organization the ability to apply best-in-class model-based systems development throughout product development. Using a systems engineering approach ensures compliance with market demands and regulatory obligations, while improving time to market and reducing costs by streamlining innovation and collaboration in the organization. Complex systems can be modeled, tested, and verified in a logical, thorough, and consistent fashion, even if they span multiple engineering disciplines.
For example, industrial equipment products continue to increase in complexity and sophistication. They involve multiple engineering disciplines and increasingly use embedded systems to replace or augment traditional mechanical functionality. Ensuring that product performance meets customer and regulatory requirements, before product launch, is a massive challenge. In order to reduce product development times, organizations need to integrate, visualize and simulate the full virtual product, including the mechanical, fluid, electrical and embedded control systems.
Systems Engineering allows integrating multiple engineering domains within a single design environment to provide a holistic view of an entire product and its behavior. Using an open modeling language, users can model and simulate the behavior of multi-disciplinary systems or sub-systems. The availability of ready-to-use model libraries e.g. mechanics, fluidics, hydraulics, pneumatics, electrical, etc., and the model structure based on components (including 3D and their behavior), significantly increase development speed, quality and understanding of a systems behavior. Similarly, state logic behavior can be modeled and simulated, with full source code generation capabilities being available from the model. Having the ability to ‘tune’ the system parameters, and performing 3D motion studies of components and systems, early in the design process reduces the need for physical prototype.