MB‐PLE to Plan and Track Submarine Configurations

Abstract

AbstractThe life of a class of submarines can be measured in decades. As such the operational demands and expectations change both strategically and tactically over its lifetime. Coupling this adaptability with the length of time submarines take to design, build, and maintain, no two “as built” submarines in a class will ever be the same even when constructed/maintained to the same “build to” design. Traditionally this has been accepted as the case and in most cases the full information set has been managed via the configuration management team at a class or batch level but not at an individual submarine level. The configuration of an individual submarine has been managed in terms of agreed changes against the class or batch baseline. Advances in technology (hardware performance, software tools and standards) now give us the opportunity to not only manage the full information set related to individual submarine system configuration baselines as they change over time but also undertake rigorous model based trade‐off studies to plan the manner in which a class, a batch, an individual submarine (variant), or any combination thereof can be modified over time. This paper will explore the use of Model‐Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) coupled with recent developments of Product Line Engineering (PLE) / Orthogonal Variability Modelling (OVM) to provide a means to plan, track, manage and evaluate an individual submarine's configuration over time in the context of the class, whilst simultaneously highlighting the wider application in the submarine enterprise and beyond.