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Almost fifty years ago, Dr. Robert Frosch, the fifth NASA administrator, delivered a speech on the practice of systems engineering and a call for improvement that remains relevant today. A key difference between the past and today is that the digital information revolution offers new ways for improvements to manage complex systems, enhance knowledge transfer, and improve communications. These new ways offer reductions in cost, schedule, and risk. Over the past several years, the NASA Systems Engineering community has explored ways to use the digital environment to realize these benefits. The NASA Systems Engineering community began evaluating the adoption of a digital approach or Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) as early as 2011. The effort performed benchmarking of industry, evaluated standards, discussed infrastructure requirements, and interviewed NASA stakeholders. In 2016, the MBSE Pathfinder was established to evaluate application of MBSE to some of the most challenging aspects of real NASA spaceflight systems. The following year, the MBSE Pathfinder expanded to more rigorous implementation and coverage across multiple phases of the system engineering lifecycle. Two years of learning, alignment, and application resulted in over a dozen concrete use cases that illustrate the benefits of a digital framework for systems engineering. The MBSE Pathfinder informed the plans to move NASA towards enterprise implementation of MBSE. This paper highlights examples in which both quantitative and qualitative benefits were obtained. The first example shows how systems engineering models used for concept design and definition were re-used for verification and test for a rocket engine. Schedule metrics were tracked to determine the improvement when using MBSE compared to recent historical data from manual methods. The second example shows the seamless transfer of modeling elements and data between the systems engineering model, computer aided design model, loads analysis, and additive manufacturing software for a payload adapter. This example shows how MBSE can be used to validate concepts and perform rapid prototyping. Qualitative benefits include improved communications and customer satisfaction. These examples, and others in a rich portfolio of results, demonstrate benefits available at points across the entire lifecycle in a rapid, agile approach. The MBSE Pathfinder projects were set up deliberately to sample multiple points in the lifecycle to understand the nuances and requirements sooner, rather than following one project end-to-end. The results from the MBSE Pathfinder help define the infrastructure and requirements necessary for a future systems engineering capability and provide a guide towards a full-up, integrated approach to systems development. To organize and implement these goals, the MBSE Pathfinder expanded into the MBSE Infusion and Modernization Initiative (MIAMI). The approach as well as the structure of MIAMI is unique in that it relies on learning from the use of MBSE on real projects and capturing the benefits that are useful for working engineers to make systems engineering easier. The lessons from this work are available for use by those who are interested in learning from or partnering with MIAMI. |
