Model-Based-System-Engineering for Advanced Analytics

The University of Limerick (UL) with over 13,000 students and 1,300 staff is an energetic and enterprising institution with a proud record of innovation and excellence in education, research and scholarship. The dynamic, entrepreneurial and pioneering values which drive UL’s mission and strategy ensures that we capitalise on local, national and international engagement and connectivity. We are renowned for providing an outstanding student experience and conducting leading edge research. Our commitment is to make a difference by shaping the future through educating and empowering our students. UL is situated on a superb riverside campus of over 130 hectares with the River Shannon as a unifying focal point. Outstanding recreational, cultural and sporting facilities further enhance this exceptional learning and research environment.

Background: Traditionally, systems-engineering practice has been dominated by paper (or paper-equivalent electronic files) documents. Such documents are read only by human beings, who comprehend the document and take further action. This practice is being replaced by a systems-engineering discipline that is based on information models that can be read by machines (in addition to being read by humans). Machine-readability is a prerequisite for automation, which improves both the quality and speed of information processing in systems engineering. Engineering complex systems, such as manufacturing and supply chains, has been moving steadily away from document-based practice to a model-based discipline. In fact, success in engineering complex systems strongly depends on proper application of model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to allow sharing of requirements across different disciplines.


Objectives: The objective of this thesis is to carry out research into Model-Based-System-Engineering (MBSE) methods to support requirements gathering in manufacturing and supply chains and the use of advanced analytical models.

Research Work: The steps of the research are: (i) research the literature on MBSE and its wider importance to support quantitative methods in the implementation of Industry 4.0 (ii) This research work will be carried out within the SFI CONFIRM project from which user requirements will be gathered from a number of companies in this project; (iii) evaluate a number of methods available within the MBSE topic, with particular focus on jABC4, standards Systems Modelling Language (SysML) and Business process modelling (BPMN); (iv) Carry out research into integration of MBSE tools and quantitative tools; (v) Propose an overall architecture for integration of an MBSE tool and quantitative tools; (vi) develop test bed to validate the overall proposed architecture.