Model-based Engineering of System Families

Most organizations do not develop systems from scratch. Due to the need to reduce cost, effort, and time to market, the traditional way of developing systems in stand-alone projects is not efficient enough to meet market demands. To meet these, adequate reuse approaches have to be followed. In this paper, we present an MBSE methodology that incorporates strategic variation management to exploit the synergies in a family of related systems. The MBSE methodology is centered on a generic system model. Variations are modeled and managed by means of features. Family members are specified with respective feature selections. Based on such selections, coherent solutions can be derived, adapted, and integrated efficiently and effectively based on generic building blocks.