Impressions from INCOSE IW 2025

By Eran Gery | 12/03/2025 | Reading time: 4 min

Earlier last month, I participated in the INCOSE International Workshop that took place in Seville, Spain. The main objective was to represent SodiusWillert at the SysML v2 vendors' showcase, presenting how our products contribute to a SysML v2 ecosystem. Here's a quick summary of the highlights of the 2025 edition.

What is the INCOSE International Workshop?

The International Council for Systems Engineering (INCOSE) is the main organization that promotes the practice of systems engineering across the world. INCOSE holds two global events every year. One is the International Workshop (IW), typically held in early February, and the other is the International Symposium (IS), which usually happens in July. The IS and the IW are the key events where practitioners from major industries, primarily A&D and automotive, but also other industries, meet with Academia and tool vendors focusing on systems engineering. The size of the event is quite consequent; typically, 400-600 people attend in person, and about 200-300 attend remotely.

The IW event is organized around the various INCOSE working groups, where each workgroup invites presenters and holds open workshops in various breakout sessions. Some of the main working groups include:
  • MBSE
  • Digital Engineering
  • AI for Systems Engineering
  • Requirements
  • Agile Systems Engineering
  • Industry working groups
  • And many others

To better understand INCOSE’s vision, I recommend visiting the Incose 2035 Vision website.

Themes Covered by IW2025

Digital transformation for systems engineering is one of the key themes of INCOSE, where at its heart is Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) as part of the broader theme of Digital Engineering.

Hence, the emerging new version of the Systems Modeling Language - SysML v2 was the main topic at the conference. INCOSE has adopted SysML as its primary SE modeling language and is closely tracking the progression of its implementation across tool vendors. There were various sessions on this topic, with tutorials, best practices, and how to onboard (migration) from SysML v1 to SysML v2.

One of the sessions was dedicated to the SysML v2 vendors' showcase, where about 17 vendors presented videos describing their capabilities related to the SysML v2 ecosystem. I would partition the v2 vendors into 3 categories:

  • Authoring tool vendors: Dassault (Catia Magic), IBM (Rhapsody SE - new!), Ansys (SAM - new!), Sparx (EA), Obeo (SysON – opensource, new), PTC (Modeler), Sensmetry (SysIDE - textual sysml v2 editor/checker – new!)
  • Thread Analysis tools and AI vendors: Celedon, MgNite, IncQuery, TomSawyer, Mathworks
  • Thread Integration vendors: Intercax (Syndea), SodiusWillert (SECollab, Publisher), SBEVision.

We have introduced SECollab publicly for the first time as a Digital Thread platform that can integrate SysML v2 models with other lifecycle applications. We used a prototype Publisher for Rhapsody SE SysML V2 that Yann Lebaupin and Sebastien Boucard from SodiusWillert made available for a demo. Andy Lapping recorded the video, which you can find here under SodiusWillert.

You can also see all other vendor presentations there.

A few more session highlights around SysML v2

The OpenMBEE v2 project: Ed Sidewitz from Model Driven and the SysML v2 lead architect is also leading an open source initiative for a GEN2 of OPeN MBEE. OpenMBEE was originally created at JPL to store models and produce views and documentation of them. OpenMBEE 2 has a v2 API interface. They envision it as an Open v2 repository with strong document generation capabilities. The document specification is based on the SysML v2 views concept. Another important use case is an RDF linked data interface for Semantic Web reasoning – this is a project pushed by JPL. JPL developed an approach leveraging Semantic Web (Ontologies) based reasoning, that leverage the RDF representation of System Models.

AADL library for SysML v2: This is a SysML v2 library that provides an AADL profile to create AADL model based on SysML v2 modelers. The library is now available for download. The AADL library offers a path from SysML v2 to embedded software design. There are a couple of implementations to generate Rust out of the SysML v2/AADL model.

Transition to SysML V2: This working group focuses on best practices for organizations to onboard SysML V2. It is headed by Chris Schrieber from Lockheed and Frank Salvatore from SAIC. They created a whole set of guidelines on how to migrate an organization from v1 to v2.

Summary

The INCOSE events are primary venues for SodiusWillert to present our lifecycle integration solutions. SysML V2 is now the main focus of INCOSE core activity, which is about to move systems engineering forward with Digital Engineering. The coming months promise to be particularly interesting!

Eran Gery

Eran Gery is a technical fellow at SodiusWillert. He focuses on digitization of engineering processes using model-based approaches, and also how they should integrate with other lifecycle disciplines. Eran also specializes in industrial domains, primarily Aerospace and Defense, Automotive, and Medical Devices. Eran’s expertise includes Systems and Software Engineering practices, Engineering Lifecycle Management, Model Based Engineering, and Product Line Engineering. He is also an active member of the SysML V2 specification teams in the OMG, and a prime contributor to the Oasis OSLC standard for digital lifecycle. Prior to SodiusWillert, Eran was global industry solutions leader at IBM. As part of his multi-year IBM service, Eran mastered the Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) solution and its application to the abovementioned industries. Earlier in his IBM career, Eran was the principal architect and founder of the Rhapsody MBSE tool.

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