A value-driven integrated approach to Model-Based Product Line Engineering - Abstract

Sep 12, 2026

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Organizations facing intense global competition seek more efficient ways to innovate and develop product and service offerings while lowering costs and shortening time to market. This paper presents a holistic integration of Product Line Engineering (PLE) and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) to connect market and business analysis with architecture, design, engineering, and manufacturing. The value-driven approach leverages MBSE best practices to address concrete implementation challenges in large real-world organizations, including variability, consistency, and feasible configuration.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryGeneral

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time6 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Product Line Engineering and MBSE

Motivation and key implementation questions

Proposed MBPLE approach

Building blocks of the approach: PLE and MBSE

A value-driven, integrated approach to Model-Based Product Line Engineering Juan Navas Thales Corporate Engineering [juan.navas@thalesgroup.com](juan.navas@thalesgroup.com) Stéphane Bonnet Thales Avionics Technical Directorate [stephane.bonnet@thalesgroup.com](stephane.bonnet@thalesgroup.com) Jean-Luc Voirin Thales Airborne Systems Thales Technical Directorate [jean-luc.voirin@fr.thalesgroup.com](jean-luc.voirin@fr.thalesgroup.com) Hugo Guillermo Chalé Gongora Thales Corporate Engineering [hugo-guillermo.chalegongora@thalesgroup.com](hugo-guillermo.chalegongora@thalesgroup.com) Copyright © 2021 by Juan Navas. Permission granted to INCOSE to publish and use. Abstract. Pushed to the edge of their capabilities in a highly competitive world market, organizations everywhere look for efficient means to innovate and develop their products and services. This paper proposes and illustrates a holistic integration of Product Line Engineering (PLE) and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) to connect and align market and business analysis, architecting, design, and engineering. This value-driven, integrated approach capitalizes on MBSE best practices to tackle the concrete challenges of product line engineering. Introduction Organizations in every business sector are striving to achieve greater profitability and competitive advantage. Many organizations struggle to propose attractive and innovative product and service offers, while facing growing pressures to decrease costs and times to market. As product-services become smarter and highly interconnected through new technologies, their complexity continues to grow. Adding to this complexity is the inherent complexity of the business contexts, competitors and industrial landscapes of today’s world market. Pushed to the edge of their capabilities, organizations everywhere look for efficient means to architect, design and produce their product-services. Two of the most popular approaches organizations have turned to for the past several years are Product Line Engineering (PLE) and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) . The reason for this is that virtually every organization performs some form of reuse (no system is created from scratch) and hardly manufactures one single instance of a product. Furthermore, several attempts to combine these two approaches into Model-Based Product Line Engineering (MBPLE) exist literature [Oster 2016][Chalé 2014][AFIS 2013][Young 2017][Li 2019] . Whilst most of these studies succeed in demonstrating that the combination of the two approaches can yield greater benefits than when applying them individually, practically none of them explores the problem in a holistic way nor tackles the challenges that arise when trying to implement MBPLE in real life, everyday practice in large organizations. Applying PLE in an efficient way to meet strategic business objectives through the definition of the appropriate product line, while ensuring that all product instances will satisfy the needs of customers, raises indeed many questions related to organization and methodology. Examples of such questions include: 􀁸 What methods can be applied to architect, design and build the contents of a product line? 􀁸 How to align the architecture and design of a product to market and business analyses? 􀁸 How to verify the consistency of alternatives and options at different system levels? 􀁸 How to master variability and secure its consistency with architecture descriptions? 􀁸 Is a feature model enough to understand what each product option or alternative consists of, or should tacit knowledge be made explicit to make informed design choices? 􀁸 How to guarantee that each defined configuration results in a feasible and valid architecture? Lessons learnt from years of product line management and deployment of architecture-centric, model-based engineering methods in our organization have lead the authors to consider that the answers to the

FAQs

What problem does the paper address in product and service development?

It addresses the need for organizations to innovate efficiently while reducing costs and time to market, despite increasing complexity and competitive pressure.

How does the paper integrate PLE and MBSE?

It proposes a holistic MBPLE approach that aligns market and business analysis with architecting, design, engineering, and manufacturing using MBSE practices.

Which implementation challenges does MBPLE aim to tackle?

It targets challenges such as aligning architecture and design with analyses, verifying consistency across system levels, managing variability with architecture descriptions, and ensuring each configuration yields feasible and valid architectures.

Sep 12, 2026

Upload by Aladdin