Digital transformation is reshaping industries, driving products toward intelligent, software-defined solutions. However, increasing complexity poses significant challenges. To address these, a structured approach combining Systems Engineering, AI-driven development, and Virtual Validation is essential. Our showcase demonstrates these key concepts using a real-world example: traffic sign recognition in a vehicle.

The digital transformation is reshaping industrial and automotive products, transitioning them from electromechanical systems to intelligent, software-driven solutions. Cloud technologies, IoT, and AI enable entirely new functionalities that enhance user experience and set new industry standards. These advancements pave the way for innovative business models, such as digital services and personalized customer experiences. At the same time, customer expectations have evolved. They now demand smart products that are always up to date, easy to use, and customizable to individual preferences.

While these advancements bring enormous opportunities, they also introduce significant challenges. The complexity of developing and maintaining software-defined products has increased dramatically, making traditional development methods insufficient. The challenges associated with this transformation can be categorized into four primary areas:

• System Complexity: softwaredefined products, system of systems, multi-domain, new technologies (e.g. AI), variants and platforms, shorter product lifecycles (TTM), and more

• System Dependability: safety, cybersecurity, reliability, availability, resilience, sustainability

• Multidisciplinary Collaborations: large organisations, interdisciplinary teams, partner and supply chains, global cooperations, cultures, timezones, languages, agile and hybrid methods, and more

• Regulatory & Ethical Compliance: regulatories, legal, directives, norms, privacy

Managing these complexities with traditional development methods is highly challenging and often leads to inefficiencies and increased risks. The increasing integration of software, evolving product architectures, and accelerating market demands require new approaches to ensure efficiency, reliability, and compliance across the entire product lifecycle.

The introduction of a holistic systems engineering approach is not just about purchasing and integrating new tools. It represents a fundamental transformation of the development process and requires a structured approach tailored to an organization’s current maturity level. This transformation encompasses adjustments to processes, methods, toolchains, and IT systems, involving their definition, rollout, and continuous optimization.

The primary focus of this whitepaper is on the aspect of Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), which we will detail in the following sections and demonstrate through our showcase.

In today's rapidly evolving product development landscape, both organizational and technical dependencies are dramatically increasing. Products are becoming interdisciplinary, development cycles more agile and faster, and expectations for transparency and end-to-end consistency have never been higher. Traditionally, systems engineering has relied on documents or various discipline-specific tools that describe different aspects - such as specifications, functional descriptions, or interface documentation - in natural language. However, these documents frequently contain redundant information, quickly losing consistency over time and across multiple contributors. Additionally, natural language is often ambiguous, information is scattered, and administrative overhead remains substantial as different stakeholders require individually tailored views.

How can these challenges be addressed effectively? MBSE offers a powerful solution. With MBSE, all critical information relevant to systems engineering - such as requirements, interfaces, systems, functions, properties, and parameters, - is captured and defined centrally within a single, cohesive database or model. Dependencies among elements are explicitly represented through hierarchical structures, instantiations, or linkages. A standardized notation, such as the Systems Modeling Language (SysML), is utilized. SysML Version 1 extends the Unified Modeling Language (UML), while the upcoming Version 2 introduces further enhancements specifically designed for systems engineering.

This centralized model enables stakeholders to generate multiple tailored views suitable for diverse project phases or specific stakeholder needs. Such views may include various SysML-defined diagrams (e.g., block diagrams, activity diagrams, sequence diagrams), structured lists (such as Bill of Materials or interface definitions), code artifacts, or even traditional documents required by reviewers or regulatory authorities.

The benefits of adopting MBSE are significant:

• Consistency: Because each element exists only once within a central model, all derived views and documentation consistently reference the same information, eliminating redundancy and discrepancies.

• Transparency: Centralizing information enhances visibility across disciplines and departments, promoting communication, collaboration, and reducing silo mentality.

• Traceability: Explicitly modeled dependencies significantly improve traceability, vital for verification processes, safety-critical systems, comprehensive testing, and impact analyses necessary for managing system changes.

• Clarity: Using a standardized, structured notation reduces ambiguities typically associated with natural language, ensuring greater precision and clearer communication.

In short, MBSE fundamentally transforms systems engineering by providing a unified, transparent, traceable, and precise approach to managing complexity in product development.

Authors:

André Brückmann
Technical Director Systems Engineering

Sebastian Diekhoff
Technical Head MBSE

Florian Schwab
Systems Engineer

Would you like to find out how we have implemented our expertise in our trade fair showcase and how we can do the same in your company? Then download the full whitepaper (PDF) below!