Research Summaries

Back Design Thinking Integrated into Model-Based Systems Engineering of Operational Architectures

Fiscal Year 2023
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Giachetti, Ronald E.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary When using a MBSE approach, mission engineering entails generating an operational architecture describing how the Navy intends to accomplish a mission. The operational architecture is a model describing the structure and relationships between the operational elements (i.e., soldiers, systems, C2, operational activities, etc.) required to conduct the mission and deliver the needed capabilities. Within the digital engineering framework, MBSE focuses on the static description of the mission structure. Other modeling tools are used to simulate and analyze the mission. It is this interplay between system description and simulation that we see incorporating design thinking. Design thinking is a creative problem-solving mindset and process. The dominate framework of design thinking is as a process iterating back and forth from problem solving and designing solutions. An alternative perspective is to see design thinking as balancing analytical thinking and intuitive thinking. Design thinking promises a means for the military to examine problems differently, to constantly reformulate problem situations, and potentially generate more innovative approaches to mission planning. This research project investigates how to integrate the design thinking perspective into a MBSE process in order to fully explore the design space of mission architectures and potentially generate highly innovative solutions. We adopt the design thinking perspectives to MBSE of missions by iterating between models of the mission and the analysis of those models via simulation and other relevant analytical models (e.g., physics-based models). We intend to demonstrate the integration of design thinking into MBSE through illustrative examples of mission engineering, provide guidance on how to develop the design thinking mindset and practices within the Navy, and describe how it can be incorporated into MBSE and digital engineering frameworks.
Keywords Design Thinking, MBSE, Mission Engineering, Innovation
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal