The evolving needs of customers and stakeholders necessitate the collaboration of diverse system elements within a cyber-physical, socio-technical network. Socio-technical systems are characterized by numerous complex interdependencies as well as by endogenous and exogenous influences. A key issue that developers must address is the mitigation of data and information uncertainties. The authors introduce an approach that operationalizes Design Thinking as a supporting sufficient condition within the context of designing system models in the realm of Model-Based Systems Engineering.

The increased complexity of development projects surpass the capabilities of existing methods. While Model Based Systems Engineering pursues technically holistic approaches to realize complex products, aspects of organization as well as risk management, are still considered separately. The identification and management of risks are crucial in order to take suitable measures to minimize adverse effects on the project or the organization. To counter this, a new graph-based method and tool using AI, tailored to the needs of complex development projects and organizations is introduced here.

System models are used to merge relevant engineering artefacts and relationships. Therefore, a high model quality must be ensured. Currently, there is no method for defining company-specific metrics to assess system model quality. In a six-step research approach, a method is defined: (1) literature analysis on quality assessment approaches, (2) derivation of success factors, (3) evaluation of approaches, (4) development of a method, (5) application in automotive industry, and (6) evaluation. The method supports system engineers to derive tailored metrics to objectively assess the model quality.

Transferring natural language requirements to use case diagrams helps to avoid inherent ambiguities. However, this is usually a manual, time-consuming task that can be accelerated by utilizing Artificial Intelligence in terms of Natural Language Processing. Thus, this contribution proposes a conceptual framework for automatically grouping interrelated functional requirements and deriving use case diagrams by combining formerly isolated approaches. Moreover, the latter are evaluated by a qualitative potential analysis to support their future industrial application.

The use of design methods across multiple design phases of the product development process often leads to inconsistency, the loss of transparency, and the rejection of design methods by practitioners. The authors of this work intend to develop a central modelling approach that supports consistency, based on the integrated function modelling (IFM) framework. Therefore, various design methods from the literature were examined for their techniques and content to identify indicators for supporting consistency. The results led to an enhancement of the IFM framework.

Due to the rising multidisciplinarity and connectivity of products especially modular product families, a sophisticated handling of the information is crucial for reducing complexity during the development. System modelling techniques have evolved to assist engineers with managing information. However, nowadays, it is rarely focusing on modular product families. This paper introduces a meta-model based on an ontology, which improves the creation and management of modular product family and its occurring data. The meta-model is presented using the example of a Passenger Service Unit (PSU).

The paper investigates approaches for implementing circular economy strategies, such as designing mechatronic products for longer service life by replacing, upgrading, or remanufacturing subsystems. The research aims at applying MBSE to provide the necessary support for dealing with the complexity of these approaches. Requirements and challenges for the development of MBSE support in this context are examined. An example of an EV battery system model shows the benefits and challenges of comprehensive system modelling and traceability in the context of circular economy strategies.

The global elderly population rises, increasing dementia cases. Built environment impact on dementia health outcomes is known, forming the basis for evidence-based design studies. There's a need for a comprehensive assessment framework due to the complexity of interactions among Architectural Variables (AVs) and Health and Care Outcomes (HCOs). This paper proposes using Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) to create such a framework. It collects data from 105 studies on 40 AVs, 36 HCOs, and 396 interactions. MBSE offers a holistic understanding, aiding healthcare facility design decisions.

The point has repeatedly been made that validation is a crucial success factor in demonstrating the scientific contribution and ensuring the adoption of results. Still, researchers in design science validate their research findings too infrequently. We must all evaluate our claimed contributions on open benchmarks to improve validation quality and foster cumulative research. In this paper, we propose a meta-model to standardise and operationalise the concept of open scientific benchmarks in design science and to guide communities of researchers in the co-development of scientific benchmarks.

The environment for powertrain production system engineers is changing radically. This initial prescriptive study proposes a systems engineering framework based on two previous case studies which are under review for publication concerning design of battery plants. The framework was developed based on ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 standard using Concept of Operations and Model-Based Systems Engineering in a workshop setting, with a focus on visualisation to understand the practical and emotional needs of the humans in the system. The framework was validated by twelve senior project members.

Implementing a product design that incorporates circular economy aspects is a highly intricate task. Its complexity stems from various aspects, such as the interdependent solution space and the challenge to evaluate the impact of circular design in early development phases. To facilitate informed decision-making, a support system is necessary that integrates product-oriented circular measures, and derives their effect on the product's design and its circularity. We present an approach for such a support system, including its evaluation on the design of an automotive center console.

Within Model-based Systems Engineering different kinds of model will be created to support the execution of engineering activites. This contribution introduces an evaluation concept which focuses on the model informativity and its usefulness within the modelling process. Thereby, it shall be investigated which advantages the integration of model elements based on different levels of abstraction and a reduction of model formalisation enables. For the model creation the analogue modelling method will be applied, which uses physical (tangible) model elements.

The design of large-scale engineered systems relies on the extensive use of models. Although there are few papers that study design review practices, we did not find any on model-based design reviews. Thus, we undertook a survey to collect current practices and challenges. We found that reviews are mainly synchronous co-located or remote meetings that involve various profiles who need to access and share models, but that they pragmatically give them up and prefer to comment on PowerPoint-like slides containing screenshots of models except when the meeting gathers only experts in model-based design.

The main focus of this paper is the exploration of fault accommodation possibilities in the context of function development. Faults occur in complex technical systems and may lead, if no accommodation entities or processes are present, to catastrophic failure. Several entities and processes exist and are applied, but mainly on the concrete levels. Faults very often concern more than one physical domain and accommodation possibilities are present in many physical or even non-physical domains. This paper explores this specific challenge and proposes an initial collection of countermeasures.

In addition to the known approaches for product development new or supplementary approaches have emerged. An important approach in this field is Systems Engineering (SE) and Model-Based Systems Engineering. Through these approaches, new procedures, level-focused description concepts and terms come into product development. However there are still some uncertainties as to how the known approaches of product development can be combined with the SE approaches. This paper aims to show how the known development approaches can be extended by and integrated with SE approaches.

As an outcome of the multi-criteria evaluation of different alternatives, product developers receive information on whether the evaluation alternatives meet the demanded property profile. If not, product characteristic and property changes are required, which can have desired and undesired effects. This contribution presents an MBSE-based approach, which extends the relational requirement model by value functions and product properties. Its novelty can be found in the integration of multi-criteria decision models, which are used to improve alternatives based on property change impact analyses.

Effect chain modeling approaches are applied to model cause-effect relations and analyze affected elements and dependencies. In this paper a systematic literature research is conducted to derive main characteristics and limitations of existing approaches. Then, the Model-based Effect Chain Analysis (MECA) method is introduced. Evaluation proves applicability of the method by means of a case example. This is done in the context of a project with a German automotive company. In the project 66 workshops were conducted to model certification-compliant effect chains in accordance to the UN ECE 156.

MBSE and SysML are increasingly finding their applications in industry as well as in academia. The reuse of the information described in SysML models depends, among others, on the modelling methods, management of dependencies between elements and on the needed remodelling effort. In this paper, a modelling method is presented that address the reuse of SysML models and descriptions as well as reuse of model variants in SysML. A case example is presented to explain the modelling methods and the gained experience is summarised in the form of general recommendations for further use.

Although Life Cycle Sustainability Assessments (LCSA) are important in evaluating the sustainability of complex products and services, there is no sufficient support for engineers performing LCSA. The concept of an Engineering Graph focuses on the relations of data within engineering. It provides a model that leverages existing data in engineering and extendibility to include specialized databases and open and public data from the semantic web. This paper proposes a concept of how Engineering Graphs can be used to address the issues of LCSA and support engineers.

Currently systems grow in complexity and more aspects, such as socio-technical aspects or the obligation to produce proof become more important. Both require a safety analysis on the system level early in the design process. System overview is provided by MBSE, while safety analysis is provided for example by FMEA. Both processes are executed organizationally and timely separated from each other. This research proposes a concept and a tool integration at the concept design phase, during system definition and functional decomposition and evaluates the effect and its potential applicability.