Teaching STPA and OPM to Engineering Students – Industry Academia Experiences

Abstract

AbstractSystem engineers are advocating model based approaches for developing systems. INCOSE is at the forefront of this initiative with many documents released in the public domain. Safety analysis is a major aspect in systems design. This is very fresh in mind today with the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines ET302 on March 10, 2019. Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) is a technique developed by Professor Nancy Leveson at the System Engineering Research Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Another technique used to define the system requirements as a text and model is the Object Process Methodology developed by Professor Dov Dori of Information Systems Engineering at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. OPM today is an ISO/PAS standard 19450. OPCAT tool is available online which can be used to model systems. A workshop on STPA and OPM were taken up as part of the industry academia interaction at Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), Manipal. Final year B.Tech. and first year M.Tech. students were taught these as hands on tutorials in a two‐day workshop. This paper covers in detail these two methods, the examples taken up at the institute and the response of the students and the lessons learnt. There was no quantitative survey carried out during the workshop but the feedback and the response from the students are very positive.