Integrating data, tools, and teams
By Eva Polonyova, Pierre Bentkowski, Stephen Rooks
This article was originally published on IBM Developer.
Today's systems engineering teams are dispersed both globally and across domains, and they deal with ever-increasing complexity and time pressures. They also face new challenges along the way from ideation to design and delivery of end-products. To succeed, systems engineers need to ensure potential risks are mitigated early in the development process and unexpected surprises are kept to a minimum. They need to build and deploy, cost reductions and with better performance and transparency. Designing complex systems therefore requires a foundation that is reliable, precise, connected, and efficient, and that can help turn the everyday struggle into a true competitive advantage.
The SysML V2 language provides such a foundation, leading to design quality improvement and additional effectiveness to the systems engineering processes. This article provides a short overview.
SysML V2 is defined by Systems Engineers, for Systems Engineers
The Systems Modeling Language (SysML) originates as an extension of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) which is rooted in describing software-intensive systems. SysML V2 is a ground up redesign of SysML, with many similar concepts but many changes too.
SysML V2 was developed by systems engineers for systems engineers, to help them design complex systems by providing an enhanced, more precise and expressive formal language with textual and graphical notations that are interchangeable. SysML V2 provides a more comprehensive and flexible framework for modeling systems enabling better communication and collaboration among stakeholders.
SysML V2 offers natural and more effective description capabilities, improved reasoning, and problem solutioning. It enhances automation, provides interoperability, and streamlines integration between models and tools (including AI), all of which empowers systems engineers with modern workflows that boost coordination across engineering domains. It brings an experience of real-time consistency across projects and development stages, enhanced ease of use, and increased modeling speed.
SysML V2's enhanced capabilities in modeling and visualizing system architectures, requirements, and behaviors make it an ideal choice for managing the intricacies of complex, large-scale robust systems, such as automotive, aerospace, and defense systems.
Engineering a system with SysML V2
Every system, be it natural, or human-defined, consists of parts and parts of those parts (imagine a composite structure creating multiple levels of sub-systems). In systems modeling, these parts are further tied to unique behaviors, attached to unique characteristics, and can come in various states. They are placed in mutual relationships, are interconnected, while their connection enables a two-way interaction, allowing for information exchange.
In SysML V2, essentially any element that represents a physical or tangible component of a system can be considered an item. This can include both hardware and software components, such as algorithms or applications. Items are often used to model the system's physical composition and can be tied to specific locations, quantities, or other attributes.
An item can be associated with one or more parts. A part represents a logical or functional component of a system, representing a distinct function or behavior, and is typically used to model the system's architecture. This distinction between parts and items helps clarify the system's structure and enables a more accurate representation of the system overall.
With SysML V2, every system owns, receives, provides, and manipulates its items, while every item can be further described in more detail (items flow through the system, can be stored, or are attached to attributes, behaviors, states). The SysML V2 specific approach to an item, introduces a significant simplification: a reduction in the number of model elements. A point of connection between any two items, used for inputs or outputs is represented by a port and an interface, while these allow for information flow.
In short, a system can be described through its:
Usage: how and who is using the system (actors' and subjects' parameters; use cases providing results or value).
Structure: what parts it is made of, how these parts connect and relate to the external environment.
Data: how it processes, receives, and outputs data.
Behaviour: what actions the system can take, what are its states and functions.
Engineering a system with SysML V2 enables practitioners to bring, define, handle, and manage a requirement, and model requirements relationships, while supporting the integration of model-based systems engineering (MBSE) with other engineering disciplines.
Processing, managing, and analyzing data is also supported, by providing notations and tools for modeling and visualizing data flows, structures, and relationships. SysML V2 also offers several features and notations for verification, enabling users to ensure that their systems meet intended performance goals, and allowing for improved quality, reliability, and reduced risk of errors.
SysML V2 also comes with streamlined definition and usage. Reuse of a concept in various contexts is much less formalized vs SysML with creating and using definition-less items – this simplifies the style of systems modeling and a minimizes the time needed for repetitive specification. Moreover, SysML V2 allows users to standardize and use a standard concept across industries, through model libraries. These are an integral part of the modeling language and include models for the base types of various definition and usage elements.
To describe the behavior of a system, SysML v2 provides action and state-based views which when combined with the expression language allow complex system behaviors to be modelled. Allocating behavior to structure can be done in a flexible way using the performer concept.
Summary
SysML V2 is a system-engineering-specific modeling language, with textual and graphical notations, that supports the design of complex systems with more natural, precise, and expressive modeling capabilities.
Building upon a strategic partnership with Siemens, IBM is introducing an entirely new solution designed for model-based collaboration with SysML V2 across the entire development lifecycle: the new IBM Rhapsody Systems Engineering. Rhapsody SE is a cloud-native, web-based tool, that is configurable and extendable via a standard API. System engineers can use IBM Rhapsody SE to enhance automation and develop smarter, more complex, and more competitive products.
Learn more about SysML v2 in this Engineering community blog. Read this announcement or watch the experts introduce IBM Rhapsody SE in this short video.
Ready to try out SysML v2 in Rhapsody SE? Get access to the interactive product tour.
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