From cars to planes, the future of transportation is already here—and is changing rapidly. Software engineering is increasingly central to both the development and maintenance of all kinds of vehicles. That means more people need to start thinking like systems engineers. Dale Tutt, vice president of aerospace and defense industry for Siemens Software, says this means companies must offer more training and planning for those designing and developing vehicles of the future.

“As you try to address the talent gap, there's a lot you can do to help make the tools easier to use. By better integrating the tools and by bringing in technologies like AI to help automate the generation of different design concepts and the analysis of those concepts using simulation tools, you can extend the capabilities of the system so that it helps empower your engineers,” says Tutt.

“Companies that are the most successful at adopting systems engineering are doing it because systems engineering and the tools being used are becoming almost like the DNA of their engineering organization. Everyone is starting to think a bit like a systems engineer, even in their normal job. The tools and the ecosystem that you use to do systems engineering has a large role in facilitating adoption.”

Nand Kochar, the vice president of automotive and transportation for Siemens Software, says a systems engineering approach can extend more broadly, as engineers think about how cars and vehicles connect to everything else in their environments.

“In a smart city, the system has become the city itself. Take a vehicle in the city, for example. The definition of the system has moved from the single vehicle to include the flow of traffic in the city and to how the traffic lights operate. You can extend that expansive ecosystem to other aspects like building management, for example, into the smart city environment,” he says.

“It becomes a totally different business case than what we have today. These new technologies are furthering innovation, both at the technical level as well as at a business model level. So, as a result of autonomy and the autonomous vehicle deployment, new business models are being formed.”