Engineering cookbooks are a compendium for the engineer which captures best practices, lessons learned, and provides guidance on how to use languages and tools to achieve a certain engineering task, such as “How-to Verify Requirements”. The OpenSE Cookbook [5] is such a reference that is an open-sourced collection of patterns, procedures, and best practices targeted for systems engineers who seek guidance on applying model-based and executable systems engineering using SysML [2]. Its content has emerged from the system level modeling effort on the European Framework Program 6 (FP6) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) [3][7].

Application of the OpenSE Cookbook practices enables consistent delivery of engineered products using a well-defined modeling approach called the Executable Systems Engineering Method (ESEM) [4], which is a refinement of the Object Oriented Systems Engineering Method (OOSEM) [6]. ESEM introduces the next phase of system modeling emphasizing executable models to enhance understanding, precision, and verification of requirements.

The OpenSE Cookbook provides a consistent, comprehensive, detailed, and background-agnostic set of operational procedures to guide practitioners through MBSE. Unlike existing SysML literature whose goal is to provide the foundations of descriptive modeling to newcomers and bring forward the arguments in favor of MBSE, the OpenSE Cookbook represents an implementation of what such literature often refers to as best practices or organization-specific procedures. It provides goal oriented guidance for systems engineers explained by a set of combinable patterns. Systems engineering workflows drive each of the pattern definitions, such as how to verify requirements, roll-up technical resources, and analysis.

The OpenSE Cookbook demonstrates how to build and analyze system models using OpenMBEE [5] as applied to educational examples as well as actual usages in the TMT production model. While the JPL Systems Environment, including its constituents like OpenMBEE and DocGen, is largely methodology and process agnostic, the OpenSE Cookbook provides field-tested patterns and examples that enable practitioners to shorten the time to productivity.

The overall goal of the OpenSE Cookbook in conjunction with OpenMBEE is to commoditize the Executable Systems Engineering Method, i.e. remove the cost and barriers to entry that allows for expanded innovation and broader operations driven by increased user access and decreased costs, in order to foster the broadest adoption.

The OpenSE Cookbook is accompanied by the OpenSE model library that provides model templates (e.g. to support ESEM), structural elements (e.g. for organizational charts), and behavioral elements to facilitate the authoring and analysis of models following the described patterns.

This OpenSE Cookbook paper provides an in-depth overview.

The original version of the cookbook was created by the INCOSE Telescope Modeling Challenge Team

Currently the following resources are available:

Model Libraries

The OpenSE Cookbook is accompanied by the OpenSE model library that provides model templates (e.g. to support ESEM), structural elements (e.g. for organizational charts), and behavioral elements to facilitate the authoring and analysis of models following the described patterns.

A library of platform independent re-usable behavioral models for different devices, such as lamps and motors, has been developed by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to build Telescope and Instrument control and supervisor applications for different software platforms.

References

[1] OpenMBEE, https://openmbee.org

[2] OMG SysML, [Systems Modeling Language (SysML) Version 1.7], OMG, 2022

[3] TMT, “Thirty Meter Telescope.” http://www.tmt.org

[4] Karban, R., Jankevičius, N., Elaasar, M. “ESEM: Automated Systems Analysis using Executable SysML Modeling Patterns”, INCOSE International Symposium (IS), Edinburgh, Scotland, 2016

[5] Karban.R., The OpenSE Cookbook: A practical, recipe based collection of patterns, procedures, and best practices for executable systems engineering for the Thirty Meter Telescope, SPIE, Austin, TX, 2018

[6] Friedenthal S, Moore A., and Steiner R., [A Practical Guide to SysML 3rd Ed.] Morgan Kaufmann OMG Press, 2014

[7] Applying a Model-Based Approach to Support Requirements Analysis on the Thirty-Meter Telescope - SEBoK