SPEC Innovations Attends NDIA Conference

SPEC Innovations President, Dr. Steven Dam, and Systems Engineers, Michael Campbell and Andy Tapia, just got back from representing SPEC Innovations at the 25th Annual Systems and Mission Engineering Conference! The annual conference is hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), and this year took place in Orlando, Florida, November 1-3. NDIA did a great job of bringing together the defense community in government, industry, and academia with the common goal of evolving systems engineering and defense acquisition.

The conference was kicked off by Mr. Elmer Roman, the Director for Mission Integration at OUSD R&E. He discussed research and engineering technology transition and other engineering initiatives of his organization. He was followed by Dr. Tim Grayson, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, who presented the operational imperatives of the Department and various approaches to integration.

The SPEC team had a great time at the conference, networking with others, listening to brilliant speakers in the industry, and sharing more about our work with attendees through a number of presentations. In Dr. Dam’s paper, “What is SE?,” he challenged the audience to get back to the basics of systems engineering, focusing on more than just modeling and simulation. He reminded the attendees that systems engineers optimize across design disciplines and optimize the cost, schedule, and performance of the system.

They had a tremendous response to their two thought pieces, “Can Data-Driven Systems Engineering (DDSE) Meet the Goals of SE Modernization,” and “What is Systems Engineering?” The DDSE paper focused on the OUSD R&E Systems Engineering Modernization that integrates four engineering practices: Digital Engineering, Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA), Mission Engineering, and Agile Development. Dr. Dam showed how SPEC’s approach to DDSE integrates these and other modern engineering practices. They had the opportunity to meet the author of this OUSD project, Ms. Nadine Geier, who was in the audience and came to their booth afterward.

Michael Campbell presented SPEC Systems Engineer, Lilleigh Stevie’s paper, “Implementing SysML v2.” Michael presented the paper with a thorough understanding of SysML v2, and he was met with numerous questions from the session’s audience. The presentation gave insight into the structure of SysML v2 and the connection it will have to the Lifecycle Modeling Language (LML), without replacing the modified Systems Modeling Language.  

Andy Tapia’s presentation, “Integration of MBSE Tools with Geospatial Visualization and Analysis Tools,” is available to watch on NDIA’s website, and “Digital Engineering a Lunar Rover Prototype using Innoslate's Digital Thread” is available on our YouTube channel.

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About NDIA: Visit https://www.ndia.org/ for more information.