SysML & MBSE with SAP - is it possible?

When you think of tools for system modeling, SAP is not necessarily the first thing you think of. So I was surprised when Christian Markusa reader of SE-Trends, drew my attention to it. Without further ado, I invited him to write a guest article on the subject.

Guest article by Christian Markus

As recently described in this blog, there are a number of well-established solutions for the highly topical issue of MBSE - with the Cameo Systems Modeller clearly dominating the field. However, in the discussions surrounding the TdSE 2020 This also raised concerns as to whether the desired PLM scenarios could be realized with the existing tools. This is probably one of the reasons why the consideration of the known and used MBSE tools ended in Michael's contribution with the desire for new competitors in the MBSE environment.

After my comment that there was definitely a new provider in SAP, the idea arose to present SAP's approach here and roughly categorize it.

With the solution SAP Enterprise Product Development (SAP EPD) SAP enters the stage of system modeling tools and thus becomes a provider in the MBSE sector.

Although the solution has been in development for a few, albeit relatively few, years, it has hardly been noticed in the SE community. There are certainly various reasons for this. On the one hand, SAP is not necessarily expected to provide a solution here, and on the other, it is not 'just' a modeling tool for SysML. But it is also.

Not just modeling

Strictly speaking, SAP EPD is a portfolio of SAP Cloud Platform solutions in the area of Product Lifecycle Management. It currently consists of four capabilities, namely Engineering, Processes (Collaboration), Visualization and Integration (Connected Products).

If you then look further into the engineering capability, it consists of the apps or functionalities for the topics of requirements elicitation and management, system modeling and test management.

The central component from a systems engineering perspective is certainly the somewhat unwieldily named SAP EPD Requirements Management and System Modeling. In principle, this is a SysML modeling and requirements management tool. Also important, however, are the requirements elicitation solution, which helps to collect data, ideas and feedback for requirements engineering and convert them into requirements, test management, which helps to map the right-hand side of the V-model, and collaboration, which addresses the process aspects of systems engineering. Until recently, these solutions together were known as SAP Intelligent Product Design - or SAP IPD.

SAP EPD Visualizations makes it possible to link data from requirements and system development as well as business objects from SAP systems with 3D model instances and thus make them visually accessible. Finally, "Connected Products" integrates simulations, IoT scenarios and software development into the portfolio. Technically, "Connected Products" is based on SAP IoT. IoT services from AWS and Azure can be easily integrated with it. In terms of simulation and software development, there is a collaboration with Ansys. The focus here is on the SCADE Suite and Medini Analysis solutions in particular.

How should SAP EPD be classified from an SE perspective?

I think both the good and the bad in this case have the same origin: it is a very recent solution.

First of all, the good news. SAP EPD is at the cutting edge of technology. As an SAP Cloud Platform application, it offers very good possibilities for linking data elements with each other and thus building very consistent PLM scenarios with MBSE integration. Inherently, vertical and horizontal traceability in the product development process can be realized without great effort, whereby this can be easily extended to business objects in SAP or third-party systems.

Data from various sources can be integrated into the requirements engineering / MBSE process and at the other end, data created in SAP EPD can be easily reused and linked.

Although SAP EPD will not be able to manage entirely without extensions, the costs for interface development are significantly lower compared to on-premise solutions, as the solution can be addressed easily via APIs. Templates are available for integrating external SAP objects into EPD. SAP S/4HANA systems are integrated 'out-of-the-box' with the solution from release 1809.

Working in the web-based front end requires no client installation and therefore no special hardware requirements. As an SAP Cloud Platform solution, operation on your own servers is not planned. AWS and Azure are currently available as cloud providers.
Apart from these technological aspects, the integrability of the requirements and model elements developed in SAP EPD in the entire PLM process is also an explicit goal of the development of the solution, which is certainly worth mentioning for such a young solution.

Room for growth

On the negative side, it must of course be said that there are always more mature best-of-breed solutions in the SE core area for individual functions of the portfolio that have been in development for many years. For example, SAP EPD certainly cannot offer the same scope as a Cameo Systems Modeller as a SysML modeling tool. Relative weaknesses can still be identified here, for example, in the navigation in models and the development of individual SysML profiles. The portfolio of third party extensions and dependent solutions is also still very small in comparison.

This means that it is certainly possible to represent a larger number of different SE use cases with the established tools at the moment. Especially if I focus on partial aspects of the systems engineering process and pick out 'the best in class'.

However, if my focus is on integrating (MB)SE into the entire PLM process and my SE use case is within the functional scope of SAP EPD, it is certainly worth taking a closer look. It will definitely be exciting to observe the further development.

Image source: Pixabay (Libra), SAP, OMG (Logos)