The Tool Integration and Model Lifecyle Managament WG provides a forum for discussion and information dissemination on best practices, methods and processes that promote the development, validation and deployment of standards to advance data exchange capability of digital data created during a product development lifecycle.
Objectives:
- To characterize systems engineering tool integration and interoperability requirements.
- To specify requirements and assess solutions for model life cycle management and data exchange.
- To provide forums for discussion and information dissemination regarding tool integration, process implementation and effectiveness of data exchange standards.
- To promote the development, validation and deployment of standards that advance the interoperability of systems engineering tool sets.
- To address model lifecycle management concerns and to establish scenarios and best practices that address the needs of the community.
- To determine efficient modeling structures to use including the repository, the models, and data within the models.
The Working Group Chair maintain the direction of the working group, the collaborations with external organizations, as well as organize and track project progress. They are responsible for reporting the working group status to the Assistant Director for SE Transformation.
The Co-chairs attend the monthly Technical Operations meetings, annual International Workshop sessions and the annual International Symposium meetings. The co-chairs organize and conduct the working group meetings at the International Workshops and Annual Symposiums, create Technical Project Plans for selected projects and assign the Technical Project Leaders.
Chair: June 2017 - June 2020: John Nallon ; Co-chair Position Open
Working Group Projects and Project Leaders: organize and lead project teams throughout the year and at the International Workshop and Annual Symposium. They execute technical project plans and recruit project participants to meet their goals and objectives.
TIMLM WG Projects:
A. Model Lifecycle Management: Leadership Opening for this project-contact John Nallon. Objectives: To address model lifecycle management concerns and establish scenarios and best practices that address the concerns of the community.
B. LOTAR for MBSE: Mark Williams, PDES Inc. ; John Nallon, INCOSE; Frank Salvatore, INCOSE. Objectives: Identify the MBSE and System Architecture deliverables that should be preserved in long term storage and define the applicable standards for the data representations and exchange.
C. SE Tools Database Project: Rene King, PPI and Wesley Hewett, INCOSE. Objective: To develop a new SE Tools Database application and service that provides a comprehensive systems engineering tools knowledge base accessed via the INCOSE Website.
D. Requirements Traceability Across the Product Lifecycle: John Russell INCOSE. (NEW) Details coming soon.
In collaboration with PDES Inc. the TIMLM WG participates in the application and analysis of data exchange standards and development of recommendations to improve the standards that define the integration and interoperability of systems engineering tools and data exchange. The TIMLM WG communicates with our members, numerous vendors, standards groups and professional organizations interested in further developing the data exchange capabilities and the management of models throughout the lifecycle of a product.
In collaboration with Project Performance International (PPI) the TIMLM WG is developing the next generation Systems Engineering Tools Database (SETDB). The project leaders are communicating with our members, numerous vendors, INCOSE and PPI stakeholders and Working Groups that are interested in developing a new tools body of knowledge.
Historical Working Group Products: (available on our CONNECT site)
INCOSE International Workshop Presentations, Panels and Workshops
- IW 2016: See TIMLM WG Technical Library on CONNECT
- IW 2017: MBSE and TIMLM WG Presentations (Requires Member Login); IW 2017 MBSE Wiki
- IW 2018: MBSE and TIMLM WG Presentations (Requires Member Login); IW 2018 MBSE Wiki
- IW 2019: MBSE and TIMLM WG Presentations (Requires Member Login); IW 2019 MBSE Wiki
International Symposium Papers/Panels/Tutorials
- IS2014 : Model Lifecycle Management for MBSE (Lonnie VanZandt)
- IS2014 : Do Systems Engineers Have a Tool/Standards Infrastructure that Enables Easy Access to the Information They Require? (Panel: Dr. Julian Johnson)
- IS2016 : Crafting a Collaboration Space for the Conceptualization of a Collaborative Engineering Service for the Management of Modeled Engineering Artifacts Throughout Their Enterprise Lifecycle. (Paper: Lonnie VanZandt)
- IS2017 : Be It Resolved: You are Wasting Time. You Need Better Systems for Model Management and Collaboration; also, Cultural Change Would Help. (Panel: Lonnie VanZandt)
Applicable Data Exchange Standards and Language Involvement:
- ISO 10303 - AP233 : Systems Engineering Data Exchange
- ISO 10303 - AP239 : Product Lifecycle Support
- ISO 10303 - AP242 : Managed Model Based 3D Engineering
- ISO 10303 - AP243 : MoSSeC (Modeling and Simulation information in a Collaborative Systems Engineering Context) : The globalization of the aerospace and defense industries is driving large volumes of work for modelling and simulation of product performance and behavior, into geographically distributed teams and into the supply chain. The modelling and simulation technical data is used to justify change decisions and to validate the product throughout development, certification and in-service. There are already mature standards for exchange of the modelling and simulation technical data, but these either do not include traceability to the systems engineering and product data management context, or are inefficient for data sharing. This context information can be summarized as “who”, “what”, “where”, “when”, “how”, “why”, and the goal of the MoSSEC project is to provide the standard for sharing this information. The MoSSEC project will be agnostic of the type of modelling and simulation, and it is the intention that the modelling and simulation data will continue to be exchanged with the technical standards in use today (e.g. AP209, AP210, AP242, FMI). This IW2019 presentation described the rationale and context for the work, provide the status and future plans of the project (developed as part of the ISO suite of STEP standards).
- LOTAR ( Long Term Archival and Retrevial ) : To realistically reduce the cost of developing new products the Systems Engineering community must evolve from our document based paradigm and embrace Model Based Engineering. The foundation of this evolution is MBSE. But the slow implementation of MBSE is an industry problem that relies on data standards, defining WHAT must be exchanged, HOW to exchange, data interoperability and preservation. We also need Leadership and a robust source of Vendor products. Any alternatives must include not just the OEMs, but also the supply base. INCOSE, PDES and LOTAR working groups have started analyzing the shift from a document paradigm to a MBSE paradigm for the LOTAR of product data and the transfer of technical data packages in the supply chain.
- OSLC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration) : Part of the OASIS standards group. OASIS is a nonprofit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. Follow this link for a listing of OASIS standards.
- ReQIF (Requirements Interchange Format) : Part of the OMG family of standards and is a requirement interchange format for tool data exchange.
- SySML (Systems Modeling Language) : Part of the OMG family of standards and is currently under revision (v2). SysML v2 Update Reports are available on our CONNECT Site.
Systems Engineering Tools Database (SETDB) Project: A Collaboration between INCOSE and Project Performance International (PPI)
The problem today is that the INCOSE membership and PPI client community do not have a single or comprehensive source of information for system engineering tool capabilities. Many man-hours are wasted searching for information and trying to select the right tool for the task at hand, largely in ignorance of the broad spectrum of available tools. The Systems Engineering Tools Database will provide a platform for the systems engineering community to access useful information regarding the capability of software tools in a host of categories.
It is the vision of this project to provide tool data about their capabilities to support the MBSE Initiative, ISO 15288, digital data exchange, key interoperability standards, and systems engineering training initiatives. We expect that the Tools Database will be available by all members of INCOSE and clients of PPI via their membership login credentials on their respective websites.
The primary purpose of the SETDB is to provide a capability for INCOSE members and PPI members and clients to access and contribute information about tools that facilitate the execution of systems engineering (SE) processes and provide a platform for tool vendors to expose the capabilities of their tools. The SETDB is intended to help our users looking for information about Systems Engineering that support ISO 15288 process activities, and to find tools that provide the needed functionality to execute these processes.
Stay tuned for more details and announcements.
This Tools Integration and Model Lifecycle Managment Working Group participates in weekly working sessions for our main projects. We also hold working sessions every year at the International Workshop (Jan/Feb) and the International Symposium (Jun/Jul). All working group members receive schedule and agenda announcements via the working group e-News, and the event planning details are posted on the working group web-site and in INCOSE CONNECT. INCOSE or Non-INCOSE members with interest in this working group may inquire about activities and questions by contacting
Chair - John Nallon
The Agenda for the INCOSE International Workshop 2020; Torrance, California USA January 2020 will be posted as soon as it is available.