Value Chain Modelling

Abstract

Many organisations find it difficult to know where to apply limited resources for the most return. Having a healthy sales funnel is vital, but what is the best way to use a limited marketing budget? All face questions like `Should we attend the ACME Conference this year?' and `E-Corp want another meeting. We have already had three and got no work. Should we bother?' This chapter outlines an initial Value Chain Framework (VCF) that the authors have developed (and are continuing to develop) to help them capture current and past business in order to analyse and decide where to target limited sales and marketing resources in the best way to answer the kinds of questions posed above and to help generate future business. In keeping with the rest of this book, you should not be surprised to find that the VCF has been developed using MBSE best practice - the Framework for Architectural Frameworks (FAF) as described in Chapter 11. The use of MBSE was also one of the key drivers in the development of the VCF: the authors are both firm believers that the best MBSE starts at home. Do not just preach (and hopefully practice) MBSE with you customers and the Systems you are developing for them, but preach and most definitely practice MBSE in your own Organisation, by applying MBSE to understanding and improving the way the Organisation works and to how it (and you) carry out MBSE. This is, all too sadly, very rare in many Systems Engineering Organisations; there are many that are great advocates of Systems Engineering (if not MBSE) but who never turn such a powerful tool on themselves and the way they work. Trying to understand the value of using MBSE for a non-systems engineering activity was of great interest to the authors and this, of course, meant that thinking about and capturing value chain had to be done using MBSE techniques. Following this introduction, the aims of the VCF are presented. The main concepts used by the VCF are then defined and described and its Viewpoints identified. Each Viewpoint is defined, with an example View that conforms to the Viewpoint. Rules are then defined that constrain the use of the VCF. The chapter concludes with some observations on issues and future work that are being considered.