Defining budgets

As successive decomposition elicits lower levels of detail, technical measurements can help decision makers to determine whether a proposed design is achieving performance goals. Such assessments at strategic intervals provide benchmarks of progress toward a solution that meets the customer's expectations.

In Systems Engineering, quantifiable parameters (such as technical performance measures, or TPMs) can be defined through budgets. When budget values are applied to structure elements, the parameters can be tracked at given points in the development cycle.

For example, initial values would be expected only to fall within a tolerance band, because early designs likely would not meet performance goals. As the solution matures, values would move increasingly closer to the goals.

Budget values can be calculated and reported from the lowest level to the system level, showing the status of downstream targets to:

• Verify targets that conform to parameters.
• Identify deficient targets for recovery or correction.

Note: Teamcenter budgets can be applied not only in solution design but throughout the lifecycle, for example, on simulation data, on physical prototypes, and on the production system.

You define budgets for parameters such as height, weight, or power. A budget is a pattern (like a template) on which values for individual elements are based.

Systems Engineering implements budgets through Microsoft Office Excel. For each budget, you specify:

• A unit of measurement for the budget values, such as inches, pounds, or watts.
• An expression for calculating downstream budget values and reporting the results upstream.
• A default export template for generating the budget worksheet in live Excel.

Using these definitions, you can apply budget values to entire structures (the peak elements) and to parent elements and their substructures. The Budgets view displays the budgets in which a selected element participates.