Short Programs

Systems Engineering, Architecture, and Lifecycle Design: Principles, Models, Tools, and Applications

Date: July 29- August 2, 2013 | Tuition: $3,950 | Continuing Education Units (CEUs): 3.0
*This course has limited enrollment. Apply early to guarantee your spot.
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Introduction  |  Who Should Attend  |  Learning Objectives  |  Course Reading Materials  | 
Program Outline  |  Schedule  |  Participants' Comments |  About the Instructors |  Location  | 
Links & Resources  |  Updates

Introduction

System and product complexities are increasing with time due to requirements for additional functionality, higher performance, competitive cost, schedule pressures, more flexibility or adaptability, and cognition-based friendlier human interface. Academics and practitioners alike have come to realize that complex engineering systems have a set of common principles, embedded in a theory, that goes beyond and cuts across the traditional fields of engineering. Novel products and systems development require the involvement of and communication between professionals with multiple disciplinary backgrounds and other stakeholders, notably the customer. This collaboration increases the likelihood of detecting product failures early on during its lifecycle, yielding significant cuts in time to market and heavy rework expenses.

The Systems Engineering discipline has been continuously growing in response to the increase in system and product complexity. System architecture is an early critical lifecycle activity that determines the system's concept and model of operation. Nurturing systems thinking and engineering skills, the engineering education this course provides grounds intuition and experience in theory and practice. We start with general SE and Systems Architecture principles. We then introduce SysML – the new SE standard from OMG. The approach underlying the system modeling is Object-Process Methodology (OPM), a comprehensive approach to systems architecting, conceptual modeling, and lifecycle support. An integrated engineering software environment, OPCAT, which combines intuitive graphics with an automatically-generated subset of English, implements OPM and supports the modeling of the system's requirements, top-level architecture, analysis and design models that are amenable to simulation and deployment. The resulting model can be translated to SysML and it constitutes a central underlying artifact of the system, which evolves and serves as a major reference to all the stakeholders throughout the entire lifecycle.

Highlights of 2013 course

• Out-of-the-box thinking that fosters a holistic approach and creative solutions;
• Combination of systems architecting principles with two modeling methodologies – SysML and OPM – and synergies between them;
• Hands-on small-scale project based on OPM, which is emerging as an ISO standard (PAS 19450) and preferred solution for systems engineering;
• Multidisciplinary, complex project-product lifetime management.

Who Should Attend

This program is intended for system architects, systems engineers, software engineers, system integrators, analysts and designers, executives, product developers, project leaders, project heads, systems biologists, banking and financial engineers and modelers, methods engineers, and database designers and administrators.

Learning Objectives

1. Synthesize and analyze existing architecting approaches to enhancing creativity while reducing ambiguity and complexity.
2. Utilize out-of-the-box holistic system thinking in developing a system's conceptual model and architecture.
3. Define system architecture, modeling, form, function, structure and behavior.
4. Describe how a system's function emerges from its form and behavior.
5. Distinguish between the notions of system, product, service, and project, and how each creates value and competitive advantage for the enterprise.
6. Evaluate the use of OPM and SysML using OPCAT software in class.
7. Integrate complexity management with abstraction and refinement.
8. Model a combined Project-Product Lifecycle Management system and study the benefits of the project-product synergies.

Course Reading Materials

Dori, D. Object-Process Methodology: A Holistic Systems Paradigm. Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, New York, 2002.

Slides and course handouts of Professor Crawley's System Architecture course.

Course Software

Used in industry and academia, OPCAT (academic version) is a software tool designed to support OPM. The updated version will be distributed to the students and serve as a platform to practice and apply the OPM analysis and design techniques, do the examples and case studies, and carry out the mini-project.

Please note that laptops are required for this course.

Program Outline

Day One

Session 1--2 hours
Introduction, Course objectives, What is a system, Form vs. Function (Crawley)

Break

Session 2--1.5 hours
System Architecture principles (Crawley)

Lunch

Session 3--1.5 hours
Model-Based Systems Architecture (Crawley Dori)

Break

Session 4--1.5 hours
OPM basics, stakeholders and beneficiaries, Project topic discussion and selection. Teamwork starts (Crawley Dori)

Day Two

Session 5--2 hours
System aspects: Function, structure, behavior (Crawley)

Break

Session 6--1.5 hours
Structural and Procedural Links (Dori)

Lunch

Session 7--1.5 hours
Determining system's function and value, teamwork (Crawley Dori)

Break

Session 8--1.5 hours
Guided teamwork on project (Dori)

Day Three

Session 9--2 hours
Complexity Management (Dori)

Break

Session 10--1.5 hours
Managing large-scale projects in industry and academia (Crawley)

Lunch

Session 11--1.5 hours
Project-Product Lifecycle Management, project teamwork (Dori)

Break

Session 12--1.5 hours
Metamodeling, project teamwork (Dori)

Day 4

Session 13--2 hours
Intermediate project presentations, feedback and discussion (Dori)

Break

Session 14--1.5 hours
Intro to SysML, SysML structure diagrams (Dori)

Lunch

Session 15--1.5 hours
SysML behavior diagrams, project teamwork (Dori)

Break

Session 16--1.5 hours
Metamodeling, project teamwork (Dori)

Day Five

Session 17--2 hours
Final project presentation and feedback (Dori Crawley)

Break

Session 18--1.5 hours
Course summary, discussion, takeaway, certification awarding (Crawley Dori)

Course schedule, registration times and Special Events

Class runs 8:30 am - 5:00 pm every day except Friday when it ends at 12:30 pm.

Registration is on Monday morning from 7:45 - 8:15 am.

Special events include a dinner for course participants and faculty on Wednesday night. Evening activities are included in tuition.

Please note that laptops are required for this course.

Participants' Comments

Senior Systems Engineer, Rockwell Collins
"A very good experience. The class broadened my understanding of what is involved in architecting a good system and gave me the opportunity to meet other engineers trying to solve problems similar to my own."

Researcher, ENI Spa
"The course has a considerable phase of exercises, giving you the possibility to put into practice immediately and with sequence of steps what you learn day by day."

CTO, iSolv Technologies(Pty)Ltd
"The course materials were both comprehensive and current with contextualization of the material in terms of the latest international research and development being conducted into modeling methodologies."

About The Instructors

Professor Edward Crawley is the Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT. He received an SB (1976) and an SM (1978) in Aeronautics and Astronautics, and an ScD (1981) in Aerospace Structures from MIT. He currently serves as the Director of the Bernard M. Gordon – MIT Engineering Leadership Program, an effort to significantly strengthen the quality of engineering leadership education for competitiveness and innovation. From 2003 to 2006 he served as the Executive Director of the Cambridge – MIT Institute. For the previous seven years, he served as the Department Head of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, leading the strategic realignment of the department.

Recently, his research has focused on the domain of architecture, design and decision support in complex technical systems that involve economic and stakeholder issues. His work spans a range from the development of underlying theory, typified by a recent paper on the Algebra of Systems, to the development of methods and tools, such as Object Process Networks and Architecture Decision Graphs. It extends as far as a consulting role on the design of actual systems. Currently he is engaged with NASA, on the design of its lunar and earth observing systems, and with BP on oil exploration system designs.

Dr. Crawley is a Fellow of the AIAA and the Royal Aeronautical Society (UK), and is a member of three national academies of engineering: the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science, the (UK) Royal Academy of Engineering, and the US National Academy of Engineering. He was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa by Chalmers University, Sweden in 2006.

A founder of ACX, a Cambridge based product development and manufacturing firm, he served as its Chairman and Chief Technology Officer from 1992 to 2000, at which time it was acquired by Cymer, Incorporated (CYMI). He is a founder and the Chairman of BioScale, a company developing biomolecular detectors. In the summer of 2007 he founded and currently serves as the Chairman of Dataxu, a Cambridge and Beijing based company in Internet Advertising Matching. In 2003 he was elected to the Board of Directors of Orbital Sciences Corporation (ORB), where he serves on the Compensation and Audit and Finance Committees.

Home page: http://aeroastro.mit.edu/faculty-research/faculty-list/edward-f-crawley

Professor Dov Dori is Visiting Professor at MIT's Engineering Systems Division (ESD). Between 2001 and 2008 he was Head of Technion's Area of Information Systems Engineering at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, and Research Affiliate at MIT. Between 1999 and 2001 he was Visiting Faculty at MIT's Sloan and ESD. Professor Dori received his B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technion in 1975, M.Sc. in Operations Research from Tel Aviv University in 1981, and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, in 1988. Between 1978 and 1984 he was Chief Industrial Engineer of the MERKAVA Tank Production Plant. His research interests include Model-Based Systems Engineering, Systems Development and Lifecycle Methodologies, Information Systems Engineering, Computer Aided Software Engineering and Web systems engineering. Dov Dori has developed the Machine Drawing Understanding System (MDUS) and Object-Process Methodology (OPM). Between 1999 and 2001 Prof. Dori was Associate Editor of IEEE Transaction on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (T-PAMI). He is Associate Editor of Systems Engineering, INCOSE's flagship journal. He is author/co-editor of four books and author of over 130 publications. Prof. Dori is Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), a Senior Member of IEEE and ACM, and a member of INCOSE. He has been consultant and invited lecturer for companies including Pratt and Whitney Canada, Ford Motor Company, FAA, NASA, The MITRE Corporation, Xerox, Kodak, and others.

Home page: http://iew3.technion.ac.il/Home/Users/dori.phtm

Location

This course takes place on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We can also offer this course for groups of employees at your location. Please contact the Short Programs office for further details.

Links & Resources

News/Articles:

• Professor Crawley wins National Academy of Engineering's Gordon Prize, January 4, 2011--click here to read the article.

Suggested Reading:

• Friedenthal, S., Moore, A., and Steiner, R. A Practical Guide to SysML: The Systems Modeling Language. Morgan Kaufmann, 2008.

Updates

• Please note that laptops are required for this course.