Why are we building the Living Specifications feature set?

What is a Specification…. and why is Stell focused on them?

A specification is a document that describes a set of engineering requirements and guidelines in human readable text. Specifications are used to define mission objectives, regulatory requirements, system designs, interface requirements for a subsystem, and processing requirements for precise coatings or inspections.

Specifications are foundational to building complex and/or safety critical systems on time and on quality. They align stakeholders - hundreds of employees and suppliers working together to build precision systems.

Precision, repeatability, safety, (and profitability!) require defining and adhering to exacting requirements throughout the development, manufacturing, and operational lifecycle.

Example of a Specification: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20170001943

The practice of engineering relies on the communication and execution of a system through mathematic/geometric models and human readable text.

Advancements in software tooling have focused on geometrical and computational modeling software for the last 30 years - and innovation in this part of the process has enabled engineers to move faster with the help of computers.

But tools for tracking the text and compliance portion of these systems has not advanced with the geometric models. Engineers have been tasked with building more complex and regulated systems, faster, with larger and more dispersed teams.

Stell is making the engineering documentation and compliance aspect of aerospace and defense projects more collaborative, modern, and delightful for users. Stell believes that engineers should spend less time doing paperwork and more time building systems!

‘Living’ Specifications

Stell’s vision is a requirements management tool that can help engineering teams collaborate and manage their requirements, easily sharing them to their customers, to their stakeholders, and across their supply chain.

We believe this change starts at the Specifications, by making these documents ‘living’ - collaborative, linked, digital, controlled, and conducive to workflows that are unique to aerospace and defense.

But what about MBSE?

Model Based Systems Engineering is an alternative method of maturing complex systems and designs (as opposed to a document-based information exchange method).

But the tools currently on the market are not widely adopted. The user interfaces are insanely complex, and usually companies have 1 or 2 superuser engineers who adopt the product. This is not a scalable solution for most of the industrial base.

Stell actually brings the benefits of MBSE - understanding systems and missions in terms of certain domains or mission elements - but allows the user to work within the document-based information exchange method that is still the preference of most working in industry.

Plainly put, humans still like communicating the concept of a system in documents. Stell gives users model-ready data, and a way of working which also allows for searching and filtering their complex systems models with keywords.

Ready to start digitizing your requirements? Reach out and Stell will set you and your team up with a trial version of the software!