MBSE: A holistic, multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to designing and maintaining systems of systems at Volvo CE

Innovation infiltrates every step of the product development process at Volvo CE—from early concept exploration to production. To optimize conventional technology (and also to incorporate gamechanging solutions), they turned to a model-driven approach using models for mechanical, software, and systems engineering. Thus, improving stakeholder communication and buy-in. Rather than relying on physical prototypes and text-based specifications, design options can be concurrently explored, rapidly and early. This new way of working is enabling better cross-discipline collaboration, higher rates of reuse, and faster time-to-market.

Market leader visualizes dependencies within complex construction equipment

Headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, Volvo Construction Equipment (CE) is a leading international manufacturer of premium construction equipment. Leveraging more than 180 years of construction expertise and the knowledge of 14,000 employees, they supply products and services to more than 140 countries around the world. With innovation at the heart of their strategy and culture, Volvo CE provides the right machines and solutions for any construction job to ensure their customers succeed.

Although Volvo CE is a leader in the construction equipment market, they realized that their siloed way of working was creating challenges, especially when introducing new products. For example, the Hauler line of business, with 37% market share in the core earthmoving segment, better fuel consumption than their nearest competitor, and excellent gross margins, found themselves hitting roadblocks even when making just minor updates. Engineers had to navigate through mountains of paper (equating to hundreds of hours of non-value add work) to understand dependencies. They needed an easier way to see what impact each changed module would have on other modules or they would face product delays and high development costs.

Today, electronics, software, and connectivity play a central role at Volvo CE across all product lines. Features are no longer delivered just through mechanical components. Instead, they are also enabled by smart software. The result: a single hauler could have an exponential increase in specifications and software modules from one product update to the next. The challenge of tracking dependencies from a single design change becomes increasingly difficult, let alone multiple design changes that are part of a given release.

Manual processes made specifications hard to track and dependencies difficult to visualize

With specifications coming from customers, regulators, and the business; combined with siloed engineering teams—mechanical, hydraulic, electronics, software, drive line, etc.—there were a lot of manual processes and there were a lot of printed documents. Traditional text-based approaches to designing and documenting products/systems are slow, error prone, and hinder innovation. Engineers were getting lost in the detail and not seeing the big picture. “We had so much paper you couldn’t read all of it. We needed to optimize across our whole system.

We needed to transition from a document-based to a new way of working,” says Pelle Bokedal, the Vice President of Strategy, Architecture and Systems at Volvo CE.

• Product complexity
• Quality
• Development costs and efficiency
• Platform re-use
• Time to market

Volvo CE decided to transition to a modelbased way of working to streamline their design processes and shift the focus to optimizing the whole product. In model-driven development (MDD), engineers replace written text captured in documents with models. Rather than relying on physical prototypes and text-based specifications, MDD uses models throughout development process—models of both mechanical and software components. Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) has helped solve this equation.

“We had so much paper you couldn’t read all of it. We needed to optimize across our whole system. We needed to transition from a documentbased to a new way of working.”
Pelle Bokedal The Vice President of Strategy, Architecture and Systems at Volvo CE

MBSE spurs technological innovation, positively impacts costs and productivity, and brings the R&D focus back to whole system optimization. Quality and regulatory compliance is also improved as risks are discovered and mitigated sooner. For the Hauler team, it provided immediate value through a clearer understanding of dependencies. And it provided a better way to manage the requirements of a complete machine.

In establishing their model-based approach, Volvo CE:

• Eliminated information silos: MBSE creates cross-disciple collaboration and ensures that requirements are managed/shared. And software is defined as part of the solution—not after any other design.
• Identified system owners: Each platform is assigned a system owner. Design engineers continue working on individual model components, whereas the system owner focuses on the entire system—software plus parts (mechanical, electronic, hydraulic, etc.).
• Created a robust product model/ architecture: Teams analyze the different components/systems with an understanding of systems of systems.

MBSE helped highlight the dependencies that were not clearly understood previously. It enabled teams to visualize and analyze different systems in each machine. Sure, an engineer can model a component independently, but they won’t be as successful in their efforts if they don’t have a clear understanding of how that component fits in the larger system of systems.

Harnessing the power of MBSE

MBSE allows Volvo CE to optimize across their entire product line.

To put this into perspective, here’s an analogy: Image you want to run a new piece of software, but the application requires better graphics and RAM than you currently have on your computer. You could order a new computer that can run the application. Or, you can upgrade your graphics card and add a bit more RAM, making it so the computer you have can run the software. How do you decide what to do?

With Volvo CE’s rich history and trusted product lines, they rarely need to start from scratch to meet customer needs. Where possible, functionality is built on existing systems given the high costs of existing hardware. MBSE provides the “free space” to make better design choices, without breaking down everything overnight.

MBSE and configuration management

Volvo CE manages the complexity of the product structure independently from the model that is used to develop/simulate the software running on the machines. This totally free way of working has helped system engineers to break down silos and transform R&D into a collaborative, multidisciplinary team.

While it is still early days, because engineers have all the logic (configuration management and MBSE), the Hauler business has seen a reduction in time and the cost of change and streamlined compliance with high rates of reuse.

“We now have a solid foundation in place for our PLM with the rollout of Windchill. Our engineers are sharing product structures and documents, all in one place. Our audit after the rollout showed that it creates a lot of value. We can now expand with even more collaboration and digital ways of working to enable fast and secured deliveries.”
Mats Karlsson Vice President of Product Platform Haulers

What’s next? Driving MBSE in a robust way

Volvo CE and PTC are working towards “push button” generation of software directly from the physics defined in the model. In addition, MBSE/3D and simulation tool integration will facilitate early and frequent virtual prototyping.

Outcome-based design with IoT

In the future, Volvo CE also plans to leverage their 100K + IoT connected products to validate design decisions and customer success metrics. Assumptions in MBSE can then be augmented by real world “wear and tear” data coming back to R&D from sensors on machines the field.

“PLM is so interesting because you are sitting on the source of the Nile River of all the information that you have in product and service development,” says Bokedal. “It comes back as rain where you can track and make use of every drop.”