Trusted Working Copies for Distributed Systems Engineering

Prewitt Ridge, Inc proposes Trusted Working Copies, a project integrating blockchain technology into a model-basednbsp;systems engineering software workflow as to allow multidisciplinary, multi-company and multi-agency teams to design systems using cutting edge systems engineering technologies while also ensuring that model revisions are consistently tracked and verified in a distributed, authoritative manner. This proposal demonstratesnbsp;the feasibility of using blockchain technologies to robustly track the development of separate, key subsystems that must successfully integrate into a larger Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) environment on a complex project. In complex system design, individual subsystems are typicallynbsp;designed using a subsystem-specificnbsp;engineering tool by Subject Matter Experts (SME). These individual tools generate file formats or interfaces that are not compatible for assessment in other engineering tools. The job of a Systems Engineer (or multiple Systems Engineers) often evolves into keeping track of the various requirements, system models, system designs, etc., and ensuring that the revisions of these models are consistent across the entire system design. Design work flows from the systems engineer to specific SMEs. These SMEs then need to fully own how their work integrates into the whole; with our method, we anticipate less overhead in interface management, change tracking, and verification by the SMEs. Our method proposes using blockchain technology to manage modification of the distributed components of truth against the initial authoritative source of truth. Through this method we expect to realize a trusted and distributed approach to systems engineering.