Identifying the Thematic Trends of Model Based Systems Engineering in Manufacturing and Production Engineering Domains

Manufacturing and production systems have become increasingly complex in the past decade to meet the competitive demand in a growing industry. As these systems grow in complexity and flexibility, there is a need for efficient management and analysis of these systems. Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) addresses the complexity inherent with systems development with a model-centric approach that supported tailored modeling languages, methods and tools. This paper identifies the thematic evolution and trends and relationships found in the use and application of MBSE specifically in the manufacturing and production engineering domain. A collection of 471 published article from Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Science Direct over the past decade were used for the analysis using text mining techniques. Due to the limitation on the access to full text information of all the articles identified, only abstracts were considered for analysis. This effort helps the researchers across the domain to explore the reason behind and understand the change of the thematic perspectives of MBSE application over the last decade. In addition, the finding of the growing interest in addressing the aspects of complexity and systems requirements, and on the aspects of the use of MBSE for identifying and addressing the challenges related to Cyber Physical Systems help in paving a path for future research.