Concurrent Systems Engineering in Aerospace: From Excel-based to Model Driven Design

Abstract

Concurrent engineering is a modern and very effective discipline of systems engineering. In the European space domain, the European Space Agency is the pioneer in this area and has performed early design studies for 10 years now. The Integrated Design Model (IDM) is still the state of the art in concurrent engineering software environments. It is based on Microsoft Excel, which induces several benefits and drawbacks related to concurrent engineering. The German Aerospace Center has used the IDM for several design studies and has identified two promising approaches to further increase the effectiveness of the concurrent engineering software environment by using modern model driven software technologies. Both concepts were implemented, and in this paper they are compared to each other and opposed to the IDM.