Approaches to automation and interoperability in systems engineering

Creating large and complex systems typically involves a number of potentially geographically separated development teams and a number of various different tools. These two aspects are two important dimensions of complexity, which should be considered when planning large system engineering efforts. The importance of these aspects has become increasingly eminent and recent approaches try to handle these issues. Among them are OSLC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration) and ModelBus®. Those approaches address the platform aspect of system engineering on complementary level of abstraction and are a step forward with respect to integration and interoperability challenges. These approaches set de facto standards, which is important to increase efficiency in systems engineering. Based on these considerations big European initiatives like the ARTMIS Joint Undertaking projects CRYSTAL and VARIES started to work on a Reference Technology Platform with the goal to improve interoperability. The talk will present challenges and solutions in large-scale system engineering efforts and focuses on the aspect of collaboration and standardisation.