Utah Engineers Journal 2021 Issue

18 Digital Engineering (Versus MBSE) Model-based system engineering sounds good in theory, but it’s only useful in reality if you can access the data, models, and tools. Digital engineering mainly describes where that access takes place. It involves a hardware and software infrastructure where the IT experts behind the engineers define and implement the kinds of secure networks and efficient processors needed to do this computationally intensive work. When you have a lot of data, digital engineering helps organize it into models and analyze it rapidly to make decisions for designing, manufacturing, or sustaining. MSBE Culture Everybody needs to get comfortable with digital engineer- ing to the same degree as we are comfortable with soft- ware suites like Microsoft Office. In the new model-based environment, where we have radical data integration and radical data availability, access will be nearly as transparent as using an app in Microsoft Office. In a model-based environment, we are already seeing models that capture and contextualize data almost transparently. The process is already happening in the cloud — hence the graphic is “fuzzy” around the edges for a reason. The cloud can make data available to anyone anywhere through virtual machines. All you need to access data through a portal is a device and the right security controls. The device’s computational burden is “thin.” You don’t have a lot of computing power on your desktop or portable device because the computing power is in the cloud, and that is where the majority of the work occurs. The information generated and stored in the cloud then flows to us as decision-makers. Continued from the previous page