As all systems engineers know, successful systems engineering requires modeling every aspect of a system and using every capability of our MBSE tools. Anything short of that is a failure, right? Wrong! Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) takes traditional, very often Microsoft Office-documented, systems engineering to the next level. But there …

Communication is the sine qua non of culture and collaboration. Despite its importance, it is often done reflexively with little conscious thought. Humans tend to use language loosely and in the company of a large number of assumptions about what others may understand. But, the task of language is to …

Several times a year, my wife and I pack up the truck with beehives, enormous pieces of honeycomb, apiarist’s tools and a white jumpsuit complete with veils and hats, and head to our local school. There, I do a beekeeping class for hundreds of elementary age kids ranging from 4 …

We often talk about understanding the three systems involved in the design space: the system under design, the context system, and the designing system. These three systems are depicted in Figure 1 from Vitech’s MBSE Primer, shown below. As the illustration makes clear, not only does the design team need …