Model Based Systems Engineering: Fundamentals and Methods

5

Engineering Processes

5.1. Introduction

If we refer to the state of the art and to professional standards, different processes will be applied by a project team whose aim is to develop a technological system.

The name, designation and the way in which these processes are organized depend on the methodological context in which they are found. For example, engineering processes considered in the recommendation ARP4754A¹ and standard EIA 632 [ANS 03] are not strictly identical for exactly this reason. Therefore, ARP4754A, recommended for the development of passenger transport aircraft and their subsystems, pays special attention to the safety assessment process, and to its dependencies and interactions with other aircraft development processes, although this process is not explicitly mentioned in other standards such as EIA632 or even ISO15288 [ISO 05].

Similarly, the concepts around which these development processes are organized also depend on the methodological context in which they are found. This is not surprising given the fact that these methodological frameworks involve technological knowledge systems and that the meaning of a concept is an emergent property of such an abstract system. For example, the term “validation” in the recommendation ARP4754A and standard ISO15288 refers to diametrically opposed concepts. In the first case, the validation is a process that involves ensuring that the system requirements are sufficiently correct and complete and that the assumptions ...