Systems of Systems Design in the IoT Era: A Model-Based Approach

Transcription

1 Systems of Systems Design in the IoT Era: A Model-Based Approach License to Distribute: PTC By Chris Rommel, Executive Vice President, and André Girard, Senior Analyst

2 INTRODUCTION: IOT MARKET IMPACT The product engineering market is evolving rapidly. New device classes and end-user engagement models are reshaping established practices and processes for value creation. Even more profound is how quickly traditional industries and engineering organizations are responding. More than 50% of respondents to VDC s recent Software and System Development Survey stated that their management now view the Internet of Things (IoT) as critical to the organization s future success. What were once slow-moving industries driven by mechanical system manufacturing optimization processes now recognize that connectivity and the subsequent ability to deliver new value-added services have become the new mechanism for and currency of differentiation. Exhibit 1- IoT Is Increasingly Cited by Management as Critical to Organizations Future Success (Percent of Respondents) 16.3% 32.9% 50.8% Agree Neither Agree or Disagree Disagree Unfortunately, the new opportunities of IoT present product engineering organizations with a host of new and augmented challenges. For one, the development of the increasingly complicated systems requires more software. Even as engineering organizations mitigate software content creation demands by leveraging internal and open source code in greater frequencies, the growth in the volume of code now required to be developed internally easily outpaces possible staff increases or organic productivity increases. Engineering organizations clearly must reevaluate their established development practices and tools to unearth new opportunities for product design synergies and accelerated time to market VDC Research Group, Inc. 2

3 Exhibit 2: Expected Annual Growth in In-House Developed Lines of Software Code (Percent of Respondents) 40% 36.3% 35% 30% 25% 23.7% 20% 16.3% 15% 11.6% 10% 8.4% 5% 0% Less Than 10% 2.6% 1.1% 11 to 25% 26 to 50% 51 to 75% 76 to 100% 101 to 200% More Than 200% The pressures surrounding software-driven content and value creation are not limited to the sheer volume in lines of code, however. These more sophisticated systems-of-systems require new design architectures and software components, such as connectivity middleware stacks, that development teams may have little to no experience previously working with given prior product requirements. These challenges only become more acute under the lens of shrinking time-tomarket windows. The challenge is understanding how you develop for IoT.... The architecture of cybertronic systems becomes important to understand the impact of change. Automotive Engineering Manager Additionally, these evolving development requirements are often now coupled with business model and process changes as organizations attempt to improve system monitoring and service capabilities. In fact, over 60% of engineers state that their organization is investigating or already monetizing post-deployment content and services. The transition to a subscription or SaaS-based business model can be disruptive to any organization. When that conversion is overlaid on a need to instrument, monitor, and analyze newly connected products, the challenge can become overwhelming if not sufficiently managed. The integration and convergence of IT, R&D, Operations, and Sales departments (among others) further complicates this dynamic. As such, organizations need ways to understand and interoperate within complex system-of-system value chains VDC Research Group, Inc. 3

4 Exhibit 3: Investigation or Implementation of Monetization of Post-Deployment Content and Services (Percent of Respondents) 8.1% Planned But No Formal Investigation 14.5% or Implementation Performed Yet Yes - Some Initial Investigation 29.9% 21.7% Yes - Extensive Research and Evaluations Yes - Some Implementation No/None Planned 13.5% 12.3% Don't Know Connected produce and service initiatives and the related organizational challenges they can cause are forcing product engineering organizations to fundamentally reevaluate how they design and deploy products. New components and bill-of-material changes are complicating the evolution of connected product functionality and extended support of deployed products. As organizations attempt to adjust their development processes accordingly, many of them are also looking to methodologies that can help parallelize and deserialize more stages of development (hardware and software). Over the course of this paper, VDC will explore some of the previously mentioned engineering trends in greater depth and offer insights into how model-based systems engineering (MBSE) can help mitigate many of the challenges facing today s engineering organizations. Background on VDC Research VDC has been covering the embedded systems market since 1996 and the use of lifecycle management solutions since The analysis supporting discussions in this paper is based on in-depth phone interviews with MBSE adopters and supplemented by findings from VDC s most recent Software and System Development Survey. This survey, capturing the input from 619 engineers, offers insight into leading business and technical trends impacting engineering organizations as well as the best practices implemented to address them. The respondents are directly involved in software and systems development across a range of industries including automotive, aerospace and defense, telecom, medical, industrial automation, and consumer electronics, among others VDC Research Group, Inc. 4

5 WHY MODEL-BASED SYSTEMS ENGINEERING FOR IOT Introducing Model-Based Systems Engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary methodology to ensure the successful specification, design, validation, and verification of complex products. To reduce risk and enable innovation, manufacturing leaders are increasingly adopting a MBSE approach. MBSE efficiently captures and communicates design through SysML models of components, products, product lines, and systems of systems. It enables engineering teams to use a common language and approach, unifying engineering disciplines and aligning high-level system design with detailed design. Modular, graphical design can help enable efficient prototyping at low cost and risk. The result of the successful application of MBSE is early, rapid exploration of concurrent options, improved cross-discipline collaboration, high rates of reuse, and, ultimately, accelerated delivery of more successful products. Practically speaking, the benefits offered via MBSE are multifaceted, providing both development and operational cost savings opportunities. For one, the automation and review facilitated by modeling can simply help development teams improve design phase productivity. Additionally, systems engineering and product development costs can be reduced via architectural reuse, which can, in turn, reduce future rework and the subsequent time and cost of change. Furthermore, for mission-critical systems, the processes and documentation generated by the technology can help streamline the compliance process. Model visualization can also help enhance product engineering innovation through accelerated development cycles and easier requirements elicitation and specification. The use of MBSE technology can also help reduce project and organizational risk. For example, commercial standards-based modeling tools, such as PTC s Integrity Modeler that is based on SysML and UML, offer the benefit of comprehensive support paired with access to the innovations and flexibility offered through an open technology. Additionally, the improved process governance, oversight, and, ultimately, product quality driven by MBSE approaches can help enhance both customer satisfaction and lower risk of financial and reputational damage exposure through recalls, etc. IoT Use Cases for MBSE Technology In addition to some of the general benefits MBSE can yield that we discussed above, there are a few specific use cases for MBSE technology that we believe hold even greater promise for next generation IoT product design: Use Case # 1: MBSE for Systems-of-Systems Design System-of-system complexity begets abstraction. We have seen this dynamic manifest and reinforce itself, catalyzing a resurgence in modeling and PLM adoption. In many sectors, organizations are no longer adopting MBSE practices out of obligation, but rather out of simple necessity. Automotive is one such industry with a long and established history of MBSE, largely for safety-critical standard and process documentation requirements. Traditionally, modeling tools were used in functional silos in this industry, with different solutions and skills sets emerging for their application for a range of tasks, including system architecture, functional/synchronous system design, Hardware-in-the-Loop prototyping, algorithm and multi-physics simulation, among others. Although the multi-system complexity and safety-critical requirements innate to the automotive domain have always driven a high value for MBSE and formal requirements management, they are becoming increasingly important give the amount of software content in those systems. This overarching system complexity is even driving long-established users of ALM and PLM technology to employ much more sophisticated implementations (e.g., PDM to PLM, etc.) VDC Research Group, Inc. 5

6 Use Case # 2: Design for Connectivity Most embedded system projects now feature some form of connectivity. For example, medical devices need to exchange information and interoperate within complex hospital and health care networks. However, when companies are adding in connectivity it is often single threaded and single purpose. As such, the true complexity and burden of IoT product evolution has not yet hit most companies developing connected products. An MBSE approach allows organizations to define connectivity at an abstract level i.e., clearly define the type of connectivity required across the value supply chain, independent of connectivity tools or approaches. Organizations can easily swap in different connectivity toolsets and methodologies without impacting the system-level model. This improved visibility thus can help organizations make more informed product and connectivity decisions. MBSE Use Case # 3: Round-Trip Engineering While many IoT use cases focus on ways to improve operational efficiency or customer service, product engineering organizations are offered another potential benefit: closed/complete loop system development. Today, matching actual customer/use requirements to system requirements is not done well. The true customer feedback loops that are so critical to Agile development methods have, to this point, remained out of reach for many engineering organizations whose products were remotely deployed or integrated into larger system-of-system designs. Fortunately, instrumented product data from the field is emerging as a new resource for previously unconnected device classes and providing actual operational evidence that can be leveraged to refine product requirements and guide next generation development lifecycles. To achieve this level of operational and design intelligence, engineering organizations must define a new functional architecture for their system. This requires a much broader view and context of a system s operation than the design alone. To that end, a semantics-based approach no longer works by itself. Today s designs must adequately bring together and abstract away physical and lower-level design. MBSE technology thus offers organizations a way to achieve the abstraction and information organization necessary to create a virtuous cycle capable of stewarding their future product evolution VDC Research Group, Inc. 6

7 Key Considerations FOR MBSE Adoption Broadening Stakeholder Set Requires Pragmatic Integrations MBSE is no longer an ivory tower. MBSE is and needs to be rolled out to the masses as a fundamental tool for complex system-design management. As much value as MBSE offers engineers and developers, its broadest potential is that as a platform capable of democratizing access to data. As your organization broadens its MBSE adoption, the value proposition is best articulated as centered on viewing and using data as opposed to the benefits achievable though expert-domain modeling. Furthermore, MBSE addresses the need for a common interface and language to promote collaboration and reuse in an efficient way across teams within an organization. Although the integration of domain-specific models may initially create its own headaches, solutions such as PTC s Modeler help accelerate time-to-value with out-of-the-box integrations available. The resultant more common framework for cross-team understanding, combined with the modularity that MBSE promotes, thus addresses one of the major challenges facing engineering organizations: productivity and speed-to-market by facilitating collaboration and asset reuse. Modeling Standard Evolution The evolution of system modeling and architecture standards is positioning MBSE technology as an even better solution to address next-generation connected system development. For example, more organizations are interested in modeling systems of systems to understand and design the growing complexity of IoT systems. This type of approach can help a design team separate concerns, allocate functionality to the most appropriate thing, and manage and agree on IoT interfaces. Even if artifacts change, one still needs to ensure they will connect and deliver the functionality needed by the whole IoT system. Historically, this was a manual process to check or a disconnected process using a separate interface database. However, having the system model in the center of the design process can simplify this portion of the development process. Additionally, emerging technologies based on related standards, such as the OMG s Reusable Asset Specification (RAS) offer additional potential value for IoT systems design. This type of design toolchain can handle asset change much better than traditional approaches, allowing you to design IoT systems in the same modular way you build them. The distributed connectivity of the future and the subsequent fragmentation of network computational intelligence will make system models of this type that much more important and also provide a powerful SoS traceability capability. IoT Complexity Driving Greater Interest in Traceability Exhibit 4: Lifecycle/Artifact Traceability of Requirements Engineering (Percent of Respondents ) Modeling Tool Use No Modeling Tool Use Semi-formal (Traceability Through Some of the Lifecycle and with Some Artifacts) 44.6% 48.9% Formal (Bi-directional Traceability Throughout the Lifecycle and to Most Artifacts) 20.4% 44.6% Completely Informal (No Links to Any Other Artifacts) 9.6% 26.2% Don't Know or N/A 1.2% 4.5% 0% 20% 40% 60% 2017 VDC Research Group, Inc. 7

8 Traceability remains a key tenet of MBSE. One of the initial drivers of the adoption of modeling tools within safety-critical markets such as automotive was the need to manage and document process-standard adherence. Already engineering organizations show much greater ability to promote traceability when using modeling tools [See Exhibit 4]. Furthermore, respondents working on IoT projects are also much more likely to be employing formal traceability practices than those respondents whose current projects are not intended for IoT connectivity. More engineering organizations are now placing a premium on the ability to elicit higher degrees of visibility and traceability of design requirements and changes throughout the entire systems-engineering workflow. While this practice is fairly well established in certain embedded sectors, the breadth and depth of integrations between lifecycle management tools have been largely limited to date. Now however, the growing complexity has elevated the importance of comprehensive lifecycle management. Traceability is evolving from a tool intended to facilitate standard adherence to a strategy in pragmatism. This practice can help enable more efficient design, development, deployment, and maintenance. For example, more software- and connectivity-driven customizable content leads to complex variant management problems. Understanding the impact on functions by changes made to some other functions can be hard to do in text-based requirements management and well suited to an MBSE approach. Engineering organizations need visibility to efficiently and effectively manage development, change, and tests. Ultimately, development organizations need to employ a metadata model to link for full traceability (e.g., OSLC). Cross-Domain Engineering Integration and the Digital Twin In the same way that complexity elevates the value proposition of modeling solutions, it will become increasingly critical for engineering organizations to identify new methods for managing overall system development across different engineering domains. Exhibit 4: Lifecycle/Artifact Traceability of Requirements Engineering (Percent of Respondents ) Improve Change Management 45.2% Reduce Late Design Cycle Rework/Refactoring Improve Overall Design Extract Potential Engineering Synergies Reduce Time to Market Ability to Improve Overall Project/Product Management 38.5% 37.8% 37.3% 37.0% 36.1% Improve Traceability 21.7% Traditional/Incumbent Process is Antiquated 9.8% No Advantage or Benefit Other 0.9% 2.1% Don't Know or N/A 9.3% 0% 20% 40% 60% 2017 VDC Research Group, Inc. 8

9 Today, many engineering organizations already utilize solutions that offer higher levels of abstraction and automation to aid their design of various software, electronic, and mechanical components. In fact, over the past two decades all engineering domains have trended toward the use of these design automation solutions. However, they largely evolved in isolation from one another. This convergent evolution is fueled by an engineering discipline-agnostic desire and requirement to enhance productivity and efficiency through automation. Toward this goal, the benefits of crossengineering domain integration and collaboration are multifaceted, and include: Facilitating synergy-inducing collaboration across project and product teams Managing all component change holistically Enabling greater visibility into and interpretation of project requirements, design, and status Promoting more widespread institutional recognition and reuse of all forms of electronic systems intellectual property (IP) The biggest systems engineering challenge is trying to understand all the different systems/domains involved in the product. Senior Software Engineer working on a connected agriculture product While cross-engineering domain integration and collaboration have been practiced to varying degrees for decades in some industries, only now is the enabling technology catching up with the vision. Engineering organizations are proactively breaking down departmental silos, deepening the need for technology to ease integrations and re-orchestrate processes. In fact, a plurality of respondents to our survey cited Improved Change Management as a leading benefit of cross-engineering domain integration [See Exhibit 5]. However, the need for and value of cross-system management and visibility extends beyond engineering collaboration. More organizations are now investigating ways to enhance more holistic digital-physical system orchestration, creating digital twins of their products. The type of integrated management of assets that can be enabled by this level information creates value for both for development and deployment. Not only can it augment the previously mentioned engineering efficiencies, it can also streamline product service and maintenance for operations by providing more complete and contextualized information. Unfortunately, many of today s incumbent processes and tools are limited in their efficacy and relevance in addressing the growing level of system complexity within and between various subsystems further underscoring the need for engineering organizations to reevaluate their tooling strategies. Augmented Reality the Evolution of Digital Twin Principles Today s CAD models have grown increasingly sophisticated; they provide rich product simulations that allow people to engage highly realistic-looking parts and products. While CAD models provide incredibly detailed renderings of physical objects, they typically do not support the system-level decision-making that allows users to experience the impact of product choices and environmental variances, such as heavy traffic and light traffic environments. The application of augmented and virtual reality technology holds enormous potential across industries to change this dynamic. In many ways, this technology serves as the next step in the evolution of the Digital Twin paradigm. Augmented Reality (AR) interfaces present a new medium of engagement with a physical product s full digital representation. Not only can this technology serve as a valuable tool for field service and repair, but it can also provide engineering teams with a new mechanism for collaborative product design and review VDC Research Group, Inc. 9

10 SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATIONS With the growth of smart, connected products comes increased competition. To thrive in this competitive marketplace, organizations must transform the way they engineer their products. MBSE is a key capability to support the rapid design and development of complex products, and is especially well suited for the IoT era. Getting Development House in Order: A Prerequisite to Designing for the IoT Companies do not currently realize the whole range of changes that will need to occur in the shift to MBSE.... It is not just a change of tools, but also of the organization and mindset. The more painful half of the story is the changes to the organization and processes. Automotive IT Researcher The precursors to MBSE success are often grounded in a foundational level of development process maturity. As such, engineering organizations should strive to refine development practices and tooling strategies to a baseline level of capabilities prior to advocating for a complete MBSE transition. For example, the establishment of formal requirementsmanagement practices should be a prerequisite for MBSE adoption. In doing so, an MBSE advocate can then lean on key tenets of process rigor and development documentation that are valuable aspects of the overall MBSE mission statement. An open approach to tooling strategy is also a key cog in MBSE success. It is important for developers to elicit integrations for and between both the established and new tools under their consideration. Relying solely on monolithic ALM and PLM toolsets is not enough. Aside from the inherent limitations in some vendors portfolios, such as a single-tool approach, is simply not pragmatic broad internal support requires an integration-first approach to ease transitions and garner advocacy. Furthermore, such open, standards-based (such as SysML) platforms promote future flexibility by staving off vendor lock-in and facilitating the integration of other engineering teams. Lastly, formal doesn t mean inflexible. While we espouse the value of establishing a foundation of engineering process rigor to development processes, it is important to find the right balance between planning/structure and speed/flexibility. For example, in the IT development space, the market quickly gravitated toward Agile development methodologies to better respond to requirements and more quickly identify development needs of value. Pursuing the promise of faster and higher quality software development, many engineering organizations followed suit but quickly recognized that their success required a more context-driven and hybridized development methodology that could still mesh with the processes and multidisciplinary requirements of electromechanical system design. To its benefit, the modularity inherently created through modeling aligns well with the goals of Agile, and the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) has previously endorsed its use for this purpose. Quick Win Approach Already, the IoT is challenging organizations to adapt quickly enough. In our research, internal resistance and incumbent skill sets were most commonly cited as the road blocks to MBSE and system-of-systems design. Many large embedded system engineering organizations often lack flexibility to change. Not only do larger organizations often have a wide range of established operating procedures, but there will also be more variability in the skill sets and experience of the teams that compose them. While it may be a strategic imperative to accelerate adoption, less sophisticated internal development teams can easily become overwhelmed by an aggressive rate of process evolution VDC Research Group, Inc. 10

11 We recommend establishing a more piecemeal approach to MBSE transformation, focusing system-by-system to ensure individual project success and stakeholder buy-in. An investment in proper training during this time is critical to ensure the establishment of best practices to create the traceability and on-ramp needed even before a broader step-wise evolution. Furthermore, as discussed above, multidisciplinary and multidepartment stakeholders require integration with varying sets of existing domain-specific tools. Only by carefully plotting and extending MBSE will organizations be able to create the type of curated functionality and role-based views of models that appeal to the broadest or lowest common denominator of stakeholders across the organization. Cultivating a positive mindset of the team is critical when kicking off a significant change. Automotive Engineering Manager Future-Proofing Engineering Assets by Choosing the Right Technology IoT technology and market advances present participant organizations with great potential for product and service differentiation. However, such opportunities are grounded in a need to effectively evolve engineering practices and solutions to navigate the range of current and future development needs from cloud-based development to augmented reality to post-deployment content delivery and data analysis. An effective systems engineering solution capable of addressing these needs is one that can transform isolated disciplines into a collaborative, multidisciplinary engineering practice. To this end, MBSE is emerging as a key solution in the IoT enterprise s toolbox based on its ability to: Facilitate collaboration by multiple stakeholders working together on the same systems model; Promote reuse through modular design that embraces design best practices, allowing product teams to quickly respond to market opportunities and competitive threats; Enable model-based product-line design and variant management that can integrate seamlessly with systems design; and Address cross-discipline coordination and collaboration by providing cohesive data management and traceability of ever-changing system specifications. Perhaps most importantly, the adoption of an MBSE approach can provide an organization with the opportunity to not only improve in the near term, but also with the flexibility and agility to adapt in an increasingly dynamic IoT marketplace. By adopting stronger engineering processes and open technology-based tools, organizations can better understand, leverage, and build upon their assets in a world where product lifecycle management truly requires the continued evolution and management of deployed products for the entirety of their lifecycles in customers hands VDC Research Group, Inc. 11

12 About the Authors Chris Rommel Chris Rommel is responsible for syndicated research and consulting engagements focused on development and deployment solutions for intelligent systems. He has helped a wide variety of clients respond to and capitalize on the leading trends impacting next-generation device markets, such as security, the Internet of Things, and M2M connectivity, as well as the growing need for system-level lifecycle management solutions. Chris has also Contact Chris: crommel@vdcresearch.com led a range of proprietary consulting projects, including competitive analyses, strategic marketing initiative support, ecosystem development strategies, and vertical market opportunity assessments. Chris holds a B.A. in Business Economics and a B.A. in Public and Private Sector Organization from Brown University. André Girard André Girard brings valuable perspective to the market research and consulting of the IoT & Embedded Technology team, having previously covered connected devices for both the Telecom and Embedded Hardware practices at VDC. His primary areas of expertise include lifecycle management solutions, Agile development, and cross-domain engineering integration. André s IoT technology background includes opportunity sizing and forecasting, market and technology assessments, competitive analysis, strategic marketing assistance, and M&A due diligence support. He also gained important experience as an independent consultant covering telecommunications and the smart grid. André holds a B.A. (magna cum laude) from MCLA. About vdc research Founded in 1971, VDC Research provides in-depth insights to technology vendors, end users, and investors across the globe. As a market research and consulting firm, VDC s coverage of AutoID, enterprise mobility, industrial automation, and IoT and embedded technologies is among the most advanced in the industry, helping our clients make critical decisions with confidence. Offering syndicated reports and custom consultation, our methodologies consistently provide accurate forecasts and unmatched thought leadership for deeply technical markets. Located in Natick, Massachusetts, VDC prides itself on its close personal relationships with clients, delivering an attention to detail and a unique perspective that is second to none VDC Research Group, Inc. P info@vdcresearch.com 2017 VDC Research Group, Inc. 12