mbe

April 14, 2016
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One area in the biomedical and healthcare domain where MBSE has made significant progress is in medical device design and manufacture. At the same time, device suppliers use modern PLM (product lifecycle management) and CAD (computer-aided design) like other organizations engaged in complex engineering problems. The first figure below shows the SysML structural decomposition of

April 5, 2016
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Efficiency in healthcare delivery has long been a target of systems engineering and operations analysis effort. Improvements in emergency room care, for example, can lead to better outcomes and better patient experience while reducing the cost of care. In this post, we apply simple parametric analysis to testing medical facility staffing and supply against requirements,

March 31, 2016
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InterCAX and Georgia Tech collaborate to provide a lot of MBSE and SysML training.  After the introductory course on SysML language, new modelers are inclined to ask, “What next?” They are looking for guidance on how to start using modeling for their own work.  They want a process, a methodology, even a template, and these

March 28, 2016
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The human cardiovascular system is extremely complex. The heart pumps blood into arteries, which subdivide into a finer and finer network of capillaries that supply oxygen and fuel and carry away waste products from the body’s tissues, and then recombine into veins that return the blood to the heart. A second loop sends blood through

March 11, 2016
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Healthcare, in the US and globally, faces a challenge: how to offer a broader range of preventative, diagnostic and therapeutic services to a greater number of consumers without a proportionate increase in cost or decline in quality. Systems Engineering can help address this challenge, but only if we accept that healthcare involves a wide range

October 16, 2015
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The Martian by Andrew Weir (2014) is a great read and now a hit movie. The astronaut hero and the expert SysML modeler have several things in common. First, they have the ability to take a complex system and adapt and reuse its components to new purposes. Second, both do careful calculations of system performance

September 21, 2015
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The Internet of Things (IoT) holds enormous promise of new capabilities for users and new opportunities for businesses. It also presents enormous challenges to systems engineers. Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) potentially provides an efficient way to address those challenges, being holistic, integrated, flexible and object-oriented. To explore this promise, Intercax is preparing a series of

September 14, 2015
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Advanced Model-Based System Engineering MBSE organizations are moving beyond the use of modeling to make “pretty pictures”. SysML parametrics are a way to add spreadsheet-like calculations to descriptive architectural diagrams. And roll-up calculations are among the most common use cases in systems engineering. Starting with a multi-level bill-of-materials or master equipment list, we want to calculate

July 7, 2015
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Modern engineering uses computer models. A model is a simplified representation of a real object or system that captures some limited aspect of it. For example, a CAD model captures its geometry, a simulation model its behavior, and so on. The most effective models combine a graphical representation, which humans can see and understand, with

April 26, 2015
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as turbines are common components in systems for flight and power generation. A whitepaper developed by Dr. Dirk Zwemer (Intercax) and Nidal Kochrad (Université de Sherbrooke) titled “Case Study: A SysML Gas Turbine Parametric Model” illustrates how to model and analyze a gas turbine using SysML. The whitepaper shows the use of SysML parametrics to model