History: 13th NoSE Spring2024

Monday, May 27th, in Linköping

09:00 – 09:15 Welcome by INCOSE Sverige
09:15 – 10:00 Peter van der Sluis and Paul van de Giessen Unveiling the complexity of the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link project
10:00 – 10:45 Coffee Break and Networking
10:45 – 11:30 Peter Lieber The GitHub revolution is coming to MBSE. Are you ready?
11:30 – 12:15 Johan Bredin Context-Based Systems Engineering
12:15 – 13:45 Lunch and Networking
13:45 – 14:30 Johanna Axehill, Linda Cederberg, Åsa Nordling Larsson, Marianne Johansson, Stephanie Chiesi and Erika Palmer The importance fo being Björn – Experiences from five generations of female engineers
14:30 – 15:15 Coffee Break and Networking
15:15 – 16:00 Erika Palmer Partnering for the Future of Systems Engineering
16:00 – 16:15 Famous Last Words

Tuesday, May28th, in Copenhagen

08:30 – 09:00 Registration
09:00 – 09:15 Welcome by INCOSE Denmark
09:15 – 10:00 Peter van der Sluis and Paul van de Giessen Unveiling the complexity of the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link project
10:00 – 10:45 Coffee Break and Networking
10:45 – 11:30 Peter Lieber The GitHub revolution is coming to MBSE. Are you ready?
11:30 – 12:15 Erika Palmer Partnering for the Future of Systems Engineering
12:15 – 13:45 Lunch and Networking
13:45 – 14:30 Henrik Balslev The Systems Engineering Reference Model
14:30 – 15:15 Coffee Break and Networking
15:15 – 16:00 Jens Christian Andersen  A Structured Backward Search Method to Analyze Faults from an Architecture
16:00 – 16:15 Famous Last Words

Wednesday, May 29th, in Hamburg

09:00 – 09:15 Welcome by GfSE (INCOSE Germany)
09:15 – 10:00 Peter van der Sluis and Paul van de Giessen Unveiling the complexity of the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link project
10:00 – 10:45 Coffee Break and Networking
10:45 – 11:30 Peter Lieber The GitHub revolution is coming to MBSE. Are you ready?
11:30 – 12:15 Johanna Axehill, Linda Cederberg, Åsa Nordling Larsson, Marianne Johansson, Stephanie Chiesi and Erika Palmer The importance fo being Björn – Experiences from five generations of female engineers
12:15 – 13:45

Lunch, Networking, and a guided tour through the ZAL

13:45 – 14:30 Jan Zutter The Hitchhiker’s Guide to MBSE in Automotive, Pharma, Rail, and Beyond
14:30 – 15:15 Coffee Break and Networking
15:15 – 16:00 Erika Palmer Partnering for the Future of Systems Engineering
16:00 – 16:15 Famous Last Words

Abstracts – Tour Speaker

Unveiling the complexity of the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link project

Peter van der Sluis

Peter van der Sluis, Relatics
Paul van de Giessen, Relatics

With an estimated construction time of 8.5 years and the preparations for the project in its current form since 2010, you can imagine that there is a lot of information to process by all parties on the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link project.

Inspired by the structured working method of the Joint Ventures on the first project contracts, the client has taken a big step towards Model-Based Systems Engineering and gained insight into the complexity within their project contracts. And especially the interfaces between the project contracts.

By making the interdependencies between all project disciplines visible, a project team suddenly gains insight into their project complexity. This visibility provides the opportunity to get answers to the critical questions that arise. Moreover, to ask questions that would otherwise have been left out.

This presentation explains how our approach and Model-Based Systems Engineering tooling support clients, engineering firms, and contractors to achieve this on large construction projects including the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link (Denmark/Germany), High Speed 2 (United Kingdom), the New Manila International Airport (Philippines), Bogotá Metro (Colombia), and Sydney Metro (Australia).


The GitHub revolution is coming to MBSE. Are you ready?

Peter Lieber, LieberLieber

More and more Systems Engineers around the world are joining the GitHub revolution. How? They apply lessons learned from Software Engineering to their Model-Based Systems Engineering capabilities! In this Session we will discuss:

  • feature branches
  • pull/merge requests
  • Build Servers aka CI/CD and Devops approaches
  • Integrations with ALM/Requirements Tools
  • Automated Model Validation

All in the context of Model Based Systems Engineering!

Peter Lieber is a parallel entrepreneur in the software industry. His best-known companies are: www.sparxsystems.de, www.lieberlieber.com and www.syntevo.com. Peter Lieber is President of the Austrian Trade Association, President of the TGM Board of Trustees and Vice President of the Association of Austrian Software Innovations.


Partnering for the Future of Systems Engineering

Erika Palmer, INCOSE

“Partnering for the Future of Systems Engineering” explores the dynamic landscape of the Future of Systems Engineering (FuSE) initiative, specifically designed to refine and evolve the Systems Engineering (SE) Vision 2035 across competencies, research, tools & environment, practices, and applications. FuSE serves as a catalyst for innovation, identifying critical gaps hindering the realization of the SE Vision 2035 and initiating and supporting relevant actions to bridge these gaps.

Central to FuSE’s mission is the fostering of involvement and collaboration both within and outside the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). The initiative actively engages in education, sharing success stories, and expanding its influence to create a vibrant ecosystem for systems engineering development.

The talk emphasizes FuSE’s proactive approach in searching for new subject matter experts to contribute to its 2025 project portfolio. It invites professionals to join the initiative, fostering an inclusive community that thrives on diverse expertise.

Furthermore, the presentation underscores FuSE’s keen interest in establishing partnerships for projects related to systems engineering for energy transitions. The collaboration seeks to address the challenges of transitioning to sustainable energy systems, emphasizing the importance of collective efforts in shaping the future of systems engineering. Attendees will gain insights into FuSE’s vision, mission, and the opportunities available for collaboration in driving the evolution of systems engineering practices.


The importance of being Björn – Experiences from five generations of female engineers

Johanna Axehill, Saab AB
Linda Cederberg, Combitech AB
Åsa Nordling Larsson, Saab AB
Marianne Johansson, Saab AB
Stephanie Chiesi, INCOSE SOARizona Chapter
Erika Palmer, Cornell University

This paper gives an overview of the situation for Swedish female systems engineers at an engineer-ing-dense company (Saab Group) and societal factors of impact for their situation. We have interviewed five generations of female systems engineers and let them share their personal experiences. Some key findings are that the older generation has paved the way for the younger, but that has in many cases been costly for the individuals. Changes in society have in general contributed to better conditions for female engineers, e.g., parental leave compensation and possibility for childcare at a low cost. A remaining problem is the lower proportion of female technical leaders compared to female systems engineers. They are often encouraged to take roles as project manager or line manager, and therefore technical leader roles still are heavily male dominated.


Abstracts – Local Speaker

Context-Based Systems Engineering

Johan Bredin, Saab AB

This paper proposes an innovative problem/system decomposition approach. Unlike the conventional method, where stakeholder requirements are transformed into system requirements for the system-of-interest (SOI), the new approach involves decomposing stakeholder requirements into specifications for modified context subsystems. These subsystems comprise elements from both the SOI and its surrounding context.

The new approach offers two key strengths. Firstly an enhanced contextual relationship. The approach naturally establishes a relationship between the SOI and its context across various abstraction levels. This contextual linkage fosters modularity and agility within the system. Secondly the new approach enables precise functionality definition. Unlike mere declarations, the new approach allows for explicit functionality definition at all levels. Consequently, we can formulate executable requirements, enabling system simulation across all system levels. Very early integration, verification, and validation become possible as a result.


A Structured Backward Search Method to Analyze Faults from an Architecture

Jens Christian Andersen, Novo Nordisk A/S

The presentation describes a method to analyze potential faults in a system based on an observed fault in a system output. The method uses a structured backward search method and notation to systematically identify and record causes of faults based on the system architecture. The method can be used proactively during the architecture definition process to support trade-off decisions and identify fault mitigations. The method has been successfully used for risk assessment of a complex medical device and was subsequently published as an article in the Project Performance International (PPI) Systems Engineering Newsletter.

Jens has been working as specialist in systems engineering for more than 15 years, implementing systems engineering processes with focus on cross-functional alignment. His personal interest, and professional focus, is centered on the technical aspects of systems engineering, especially safety risk management. Jens has been an invited lecturer on safety critical systems at the Technical University of Denmark for more than a decade.


The Systems Engineering Reference Model

Henrik Balslev, Systems Engineering A/S

It is clear that “different models serve different purposes”. However, you need something to relate these different models with each other, so they speak the same language. This “something” is what this presentation is about.

The presentation is a showcase of how to use the RDS 81346 Common Language in context of systems engineering modelling to allow engineering silos and different system models to interrelate and get a common reference point. The model can be read by humans as well as IT systems.

From day one, the RDS 81346 does not have any impact on your IT systems, yet it allows you to connect your different models across any domain and disciplines. The RDS 81346 language is easy to learn and to use and does not require any specific insight.

Please visit the homepage www.81346.com and the RDS 81346 channel at YouTube to get more information https://www.youtube.com/@RDSTechnique.

Henrik Balslev is certified as Expert Systems Engineering Professional (ESEP) and founding partner of Systems Engineering A/S in Copenhagen. With more than 35 years of experience from a wide range of engineering design, his daily focus is to master the SE technique and make it simple and practical in daily life for all engineers.


The Hitchhiker’s Guide to MBSE in Automotive, Pharma, Rail, and Beyond


Jan Zutter, INVENSITY GmbH

Everybody knows that Model-Based Systems Engineering helps managing increasing complexity of todays products and improves communication between the customer and the involved teams creating products better fitting to the needs. On the other hand, concrete estimates on cost-savings are still hard to communicate to Heads of R&D because the cost-side (licences, training, coaching, time-delay caused by the change of the established working style) is far more transparent and quantifiable than the side of saved costs.

In the end, at bigger companies, the decision for or against MBSE or for some compromise between already established and model-based working style strongly depends on the mindset of a small group in the upper management, not just on the mindset of a few MBSE champions within the team.

Across the different industries, a strong need for empowerment of the involved colleagues to foster a common way of working as well as embedding adjoining departments like safety and security can be identified as commonalities. In the end, a critical amount of people needs to think in a model-based way; architects need to have enough customers for this work.

In this presentation, three real-world projects from different industries are described. Based on the status of the transformation towards MBSE, we show that resistance to change or not enough time to prepare for a change can lead to slow transformation. Instead, based on our experience, a team with a good vision of the future development plays a crucial role in defining the new working style.

As everybody knows: “tool follows process”. It is important to enable such a solution without changing the complete existing way of working towards the implementation of a specific tool vendor.

The experiences we will present will showcase the most important Dos and Don’ts of a successful implementation of MBSE in existing organizations.