As companies attempt to transform their design processes into a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) environment, they often find that the road to transformation is less than smooth. Many of the bumps and potholes in that road stem from the tendency to pick up on a term without being very rigorous …

How do you do laundry on a nine-month trip to Mars? Answer: You don’t. At least, scientists have not yet figured out the answer to this challenge—one of space travels interesting problems. A water-based solution is out of the question—water is heavy and expensive to ship, and what water one …

The Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge* defines a model as “a simplified representation of a system at some particular point in time or space intended to promote understanding of the real system.” There is broad acceptance that models are limited or simplified representations of a reality of interest. There is …

As is often the case, it is the neglect of fundamental principles that is at the root of poor performance. Sports coaches often stress the return to fundamentals—the “blocking and tackling”—as the key to improving team performance. This is a recognition of the powerful effect that adherence to sound fundamental …