Situation
A well-established company, who are a specialist in automotive test systems are looking to use their expertise to enable automation of conventional vehicle fleets. Their mission is to accelerate the transition to autonomy by providing retrofittable solutions for off-highway vehicles. After the initial enquiry with 3SK on safety assessment, the customer soon realised that having a system architecture would hugely benefit their organisation and provide the necessary groundwork for their product development. Seeing our capabilities in systems engineering and how it has helped several customers in the hardware and software design and towards system integration, the customer awarded us, 3SK, with the project to develop their core system architecture.
Approach
Given the scale and complexity of the system and the product being made up of multiple systems, it was vital to have a clear project plan and regular touch points with the customer. Consequently, 3SK followed these simple steps to execute the project.
- Engage with stakeholders to understand their system, system boundary and product use case.
- Prioritise and plan the project activities and agree on delivery milestones.
- Adapt the 3SK’s system engineering framework to fit customer’s need.
- Develop the system architecture, identify system functions and interactions between system elements.
- Engage the customer for regular review of the work products and adopt any feedback in the next subsequent iterative delivery.
With 3SK’s expertise in systems engineering, we were able to add significant value by introducing efficiency into the design process and simplify the system architecture which was appreciated by the customer.
Outcome
- A consistent set of system artifacts and models including system architecture for the whole product eco-system.
- A clear breakdown of system design that was documented using SysML model.
- Delivered training on system engineering and system modelling to introduce wider customer team to systems design and architecture.
- A strong foundation of a system engineering framework.
- Complete delivery of project within the agreed timeline.
Value Add
- A system architecture consistent with their product requirements document.
- Identification of system functions with clear allocation to different system elements like sensors, hardware and software.
- Formal documentation of system design to enable effective and consistent communication within customer’s various departments and external suppliers.
- Enable customer to estimate the scale of the project and effort required for product development.
- Ability to understand the limitations of the architecture and plan for future development.
- The system engineering framework provides the necessary foundation to build on the system architecture for future products.
Customer Feedback
Head of Engineering: “Many thanks for all the work on the system modelling and training. It’s brought the model into alignment with our Product Requirement Document and introduced Systems engineering to the wider group.”
