Constraint based Modeling according to Reference Design

Whether by design or by practice, systems engineering (SE) processes are used more and more often in Modeling and Simulation (M&S). While the two disciplines are very close, there are some differences that must be taken into account in order to successfully reuse practices from one community to another. In this paper, we introduce the M&S System Development Framework (MS-SDF) that unifies SE and M&S processes. The MS-SDF comprises the SE processes of requirements capture, conceptual modelling, and verification and validation (V&V), and extends them to M&S. We use model theory as a deductive apparatus in order to develop the MS-SDF. We discuss the benefits of the MS-SDF especially in the selection between federation development and multi-model approaches and the design of composable models and simulations. Lastly, a real life application example of the framework is provided.

2005

Abstract: Business process modeling and design, as an essential part of business process management, has gained much attention in recent years. An important tool for this purpose is reference models, whose aim is to capture domain knowledge and assist in the design of enterprise specific business processes. However, while much attention has been given to the content of these models, the actual process of reusing this knowledge has not been extensively addressed.

2022

Models in face of increasing complexity support development of new systems and enterprises. For an efficient procedure, reference models are adapted in order to reach a solution with les overhead which covers all necessary aspects. Here, a key challenge is applying a consistent methodology for the descriptions of such reference designs. This paper presents a holistic approach to describe reference models across different views and levels. Modeling stretches from the requirements and capabilities over their subdivision to services and components up to the realization in processes and data structures. Benefits include an end-to-end traceability of the capability coverage with performance parameters considered already at the starting point of the reference design. This enables focused development while considering design constraints and potential bottlenecks. We demonstrate the approach on the example of the development of a smart robot. Here, our methodology highly supports transferability of designs for the development of further systems.

arXiv: Software Engineering, 2014

Software reuse allows the software industry to simultaneously reduce development cost and improve product quality. Reuse of early-stage artifacts has been acknowledged to be more beneficial than reuse of later-stage artifacts. In this regard, early-stage reference models have been considered as good tools to allow reuse across applications within the same domain. However, our literature survey reported in this paper reveals that the problem of automatically developing reference models from given instances has not caught enough researchers' attention yet. Accordingly, in this paper we propose a framework for building a reference model that captures the common and variable analysis/design practices, across the different applications in a domain. The framework considers multi-view models in assessing the commonalities and variabilities among given instances. The proposed framework incorporates learning capabilities to allow improving the quality and reusability of the reference model as it is being used.

2003

Abstract The reference model of Gunter et al, 2000, provides a framework for describing and analyzing key software engineering artifacts and their properties. We propose a reification of this framework in which behaviour is explicitly trace-based. We find that this benefits the formalism in adding structure in ways which are meaningful and practical from an engineering viewpoint.

Software and Systems Modeling

Reference architectures (RAs) are successfully used to represent families of concrete software architectures in several domains such as automotive, banking, and the Internet of Things. RAs inspire architects when designing concrete architectures, and they help to guarantee compliance with architectural decisions, regulatory requirements, as well as architectural qualities. Despite their importance, reference architectures still suffer from a number of open technical issues, including (i) the lack of a common interpretation, a precise notation for their representation and documentation, and (ii) the lack of conformance mechanisms for checking the compliance of concrete architectures to their related reference architecture, architectural decisions, regulatory requirements, etc. This paper addresses these two issues by introducing a model-driven approach that leverages (i) a domain-independent metamodel for the representation of reference architectures and (ii) the combination of model...

For a couple of decades, process quality has been considered one of the main factors in the delivery of high quality products. Multiple models and standards have emerged as a solution to this issue. However, for any company, the harmonization of diverse models with the aim at fulfilling its quality requirements is not an easy task to pursue. The difficulty fundamentally lies in the fact that there is a lack of specific guidelines, together with an evident inexistence of a homogeneous representation that could make the endeavour with regards to Software Engineering less intense. In order to address this challenge, this paper presents a Ontology of Process-reference Models, called PrMO. It defines a Common Structure of Process Elements (CSPE) as a means to support the harmonization of structural differences of multiple reference models, through the homogenization of their process structures. PrMO has been validated through instantiation of the information contained in different models...

misc.jisc.ac.uk

A reference model to support a domain requires a significant level of adaptability and customization in order to fully address the domain. Our approach to reference modelling defines a generic business process for the domain, recognising that this needs to be adapted to support the ...

Proceedings of the Design Society: DESIGN Conference

A reference process should consider to the needs and behaviours of the process users, as well as all relevant restrictions and boundary conditions within the company and its environment. Therefore, this contribution provides a method to synthesize relevant requirements on reference processes and supports the consideration of these requirements during the design of a new, company-specific reference process based on meta-models. The developed method was used to design a reference process for automotive predevelopment projects and its applicability and usefulness was evaluated successfully.

Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science

When studying the design process, many models, approaches and methods can be found. As these are all described in different types of diagrams, figures, lists and recipes, comparing them is not an easy task. Also when the results of interviews with or observations from designers have to be ordered, problems may arise. From the study of the design process, and the results of an investigation into the use of models, we will derive a reference model for the system design phase. For this we will also investigate complexity, concreteness and realization. The reference model can be used to find similarities and dissimilarities between different design processes, and to find possible connections between approaches. We will map several well-known design process models in the reference model.