Shaun Edsall, Client Executive, Dassault Systèmes
The defence manufacturing industry is crucial for developing sovereign industrial capabilities in Australia amid new geopolitical realities and supply chain disruptions. However, reliance on traditional processes presents a significant challenge in attracting and retaining modern, digital-native workforces while preserving essential knowledge gained by experienced workers.
As more senior staff exit the industry or move across specialisations, traditional systems used for product development and system engineering fail to capture and share their knowledge for upskilling the existing workforce. Concurrently, there is a persistent skills shortage in the defence industry in the region.
Companies face increasing competition from both large organisations and a growing base of small and medium-sized enterprises, intensifying the struggle to retain talent. Additionally, the rising complexities and costs of system engineering and product development impact program management and execution. Government demands on defence manufacturers and OEMs are also increasing, focusing on integrating multiple data sources, systems, and interfaces, which further complicates projects leading to increasing costs and quality issues.
Why use MBSE in defence?
One way leading organisations are responding to this challenge in digital engineering is through adopting a strong Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE) approach. MBSE fundamentally transforms engineering, enabling a mature and data-driven approach to deliver complex, multi-faceted programs. In turn, organisations can utilise MBSE to retain talent, share knowledge, and upskill the workforce in the defence industry. This approach allows for blending experienced engineering talents with an emerging, digital-savvy workforce in order to achieve a robust engineering discipline.
MBSE enables the modelling and simulation of complex systems, reducing costs and risks while enhancing decision-making. Organisations can design and analyse systems more efficiently and effectively with MBSE, ultimately delivering better systems and products.
Digital engineering and MBSE drive sustainable manufacturing by increasing reuse through model-based components and identifying defects and challenges early in the manufacturing cycle. It also serves as a funnel for requirements management and ensures traceability to meet commonwealth requirements, enabling smoother deployment, testing, and verification.
Dassault Systèmes makes adopting MBSE easier
Dassault Systèmes advances methodologies, frameworks, and enabling solutions to address the needs of MBSE capabilities in the rapidly changing defence industry. This includes leveraging leading languages such as SysML and aligning to key principles such as the recently released Department of Defence Digital Engineering Strategy.
Digitally connecting development artifacts throughout the model value chain ensures alignment of upstream and downstream development processes, delivering digital continuity.
Leveraging cutting-edge solutions is essential for business transformation in the defence industry. In this regard, Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform has proven it can enable the true value of MBSE while supporting technological capabilities that drive agility, quality, and innovation.
How MBSE helps retain talent and knowledge in defence
Digital engineering and MBSE can be key factors in workforce retention by blending the knowledge and skills of engineers familiar with digital tools with that of system engineers of an earlier generation who are not. Additionally, recent engineering graduates across many disciplines are typically comfortable with digital engineering but lack experience with large-scale defence programs.
Building MBSE capability as a key organisational pillar fosters better collaboration across the entire enterprise among all generations of workers and allows for further talent mobility. This flexibility enables younger workers to move between specialisations without the organisation losing the intrinsic value of their expertise, which can be a key talent attraction factor as anecdotally it shows that more often workers look for new experiences and challenges. Conversely, it helps those who have spent many years on a program to share and contribute to other emerging programs as their knowledge is digitally captured through modelling.
In model-based programs, all knowledge and processes are documented and compartmentalized within the models based on specialization. These models are easily shareable, ensuring seamless collaboration and creating a ‘live model,’ which mitigates the risk of single points of failure when people move on from their roles.
Organisations can leverage this for re-usability and establishing standards and defined approaches within capabilities and programs, and further improve their ability to deliver to scope, on time and to budget.
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform’s role in retaining defence talent
According to a survey by Lifecycle Insights, 19% of projects are cancelled before delivery, and 44% miss their delivery dates, while only 18% are delivered on time. Integrating technology, strategies, simulation, design exploration, and decision analytics earlier in the lifecycle leads to a deeper understanding of the design space and helps organisations make better decisions, avoiding downstream risks.
The increasing complexity of defence systems, and evolving missions and threats require greater agility. Budgetary constraints demand predictable delivery and informed decision-making, maximising capability within affordability limits. A transformation towards a model-based approach using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is inevitable. This platform improves program performance, ensures job flexibility, and retains knowledge regardless of personnel changes.
At the University of Adelaide, 2,000 engineers are trained on Dassault Systèmes’ technology annually, including advanced MBSE tools. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform inspires them to join the defence industry and share digital tools and threads with experienced engineers and naval architects.
Dassault Systèmes provides MBSE tools on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for seamless collaboration and knowledge sharing for defence products like submarines and frigates. Transitioning from a document-based to a model-based enterprise framework captures knowledge as models and practices model-based program management, enhancing reusability and traceability from requirements gathering to product modelling.
The model-first approach is used through verification and testing to retain knowledge within the organization, easily train employees, and use the knowledge as building blocks for future expansion.
The key is to draw knowledge from people to create working models simulated on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, ensuring no loss of skills when experienced personnel leave, along with product sustainability and resilience. This institutionalisation of knowledge allows the digital-native generation to integrate and adopt it seamlessly, making it easier for new workers to contribute to projects like warships and submarines, eliminating single points of failure.
A model-based engineering approach also enables easier internal mobility, allowing workers to move between projects and pursue their own ideal career development goals. This approach reduces the risk of losing younger workers, ensuring the sustainability and growth of the industry within Australia, especially as the Australian government aims to boost sovereign capabilities. An enterprise-first approach to MBSE helps people acquire skills faster, making their work more efficient, meaningful, and enjoyable, thus increasing retention rates. This in turn enables defence industry organisations of all sizes to better deliver these critical programs amid increasing complexity, ensuring robust industrial capability for organisations and, more importantly, ensuring true progress for Australia in the defence sector.
Discover Dassault Systèmes solutions in MBSE through CATIA rôles and apps here.