Validating Process Models in Systems Engineering Environments

Systems engineering environments usually involve multi-disciplinary engineering domains, such as mechanical, electrical, and software engineering, to cooperate and reach the common goals, e.g., to produce good quality products in time. Validation of systems engineering processes is challenging, because typically there are large numbers of possible combinations of heterogeneous sub-processes to test. In this paper, we propose a simulation-based approach to validate systems engineering processes. Simulation-based process validation (SbPV) aims at improving the efficiency of process validation in the real world. We collect engineering process data from the simulation of the systems engineering environments and analyze the conformance with the designed process model. As a real-world use case, we describe a production automation system and use a prototype implementation of the proposed SbPV approach to link the real engineering process information with the designed process model. Major result was the SbPV approach improved the efficiency of validating systems engineering processes and can complement testing of the sub-processes.