System Thinking in the Design of Enterprises with Support of SEREA (Systems Engineering Reference Enterprise Architecture)

One of the biggest challenges in designing complex systems is to design and specify the components in such a way that they contribute to the overall functionality of the system. Specialization, cost efficiency, or other reasons require that these components be co‐developed, verified, and delivered by various suppliers, and then integrated, verified, and validated by the integrator. This makes the approaches of systems engineering crucial for integrators (OEMs). As the complexity of the systems to be managed increases, so does the complexity of designing, maintaining, and further developing these approaches. The methods of model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) have already proven their relevance at the system level today. Companies cannot ensure the required quality of their systems without a model‐based approach. The transition from document‐based to model‐based operational architectures presents a comparable challenge. SEREA is listed to be designated as an INCOSE technical product, offering a model‐based reference enterprise architecture based on the uified architecture framework (UAF). With SEREA as a basis, a customized enterprise architecture can be created. Since SEREA is based on ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288, it is particularly suitable for companies dealing with the life cycle management of complex systems. This paper describes how SEREA has been developed and how shall be tailored.