Reuse and product-orientation as key elements for systems engineering: aligning a reference model for the industrial solutions business with ISO/IEC 15288

Abstract

Industrial engineering can be regarded as a specialization of systems engineering. It deals with the engineering of industrial solutions, e.g. power plants or airport logistics systems. In today's competitive environment, the industrial solutions business faces high cost and productivity pressure, increasing complexity, and highly demanding customers. Transforming this business from the project-focused development of highly customer-specific solutions to the customization of a 'solution product' and fostering reuse in general are judged highly rewarding approaches to tackle these challenges. As a consequence, an ISO/IEC 15504 conformant process reference model for the industrial solutions business has been proposed, based on the integration of a process reference model for reuse in industrial engineering and a product-oriented process model for the engineering of industrial solutions. In this paper we present the results of analyzing this reference model against the international standard ISO/IEC 15288 on systems life cycle processes. The results of the mapping of these models are analyzed to identify further enhancements of the reference model for the industrial solutions business, and for identifying potential directions for the further evolution of the international standard.