COGENT: A Concurrent Engineering and Generative Engineering Tooling Platform

Abstract

System architecture design is a complex and complicated process. Systems, subsystems, and components must undergo a strict evaluation process detailing trade-offs, risks, benefits, and feasibility at the fringes of what is technologically possible. Poor architecture design leads to poor product performance, wasted resources, and in worst-case scenarios–fatalities caused by mission/product failure. Two upcoming domains seek to improve the generation, evaluation, and selection of system architecture configurations. These domains are generative engineering and concurrent engineering. Generative engineering allows for the automatic generation and evaluation of thousands of architecture configurations. Concurrent engineering is a methodology of subsystem design teams working collaboratively and simultaneously to create and select system architecture configurations. However, what had yet to be established was the value of combining the two domains. We sought to combine generative engineering and concurrent engineering to identify this value by creating the Concurrent Generative Engineering Tooling (COGENT) platform. COGENT is a plugin solution architecture that enables cross-functional teams in automated system architecture generation in concurrent design facilities. A conceptual FireSat case study was explored, demonstrating COGENT capabilities such as enabling concurrent users, synchronized tool usage, centralized object storage, and connectivity to third-party software and/or user-defined features for space systems. COGENT is modular, extensible, and easy to integrate into any system development lifecycle. With COGENT, system designers can focus on their primary concerns, goals, and constraints. Using COGENT will allow system engineers, system architects, and subsystem designers to identify optimal system architecture configurations at a fraction of the time and cost.