Combining System and Process Modeling to Achieve Better Efficiency in Catering

In aviation, improving onboard efficiency, particularly reducing mass, volume, and power consumption, is crucial for reducing environmentally harmful emissions and lowering operating costs. System modeling forms an engineering basis to describe the technical characteristics of individual systems and their architecture, e.g. the aircraft galley, including their components, interfaces, dependencies and functional relationships. However, while this structural view is vital, it does not reflect how a system is actually used in operational processes. As a result, important opportunities for more efficient operation and use, e.g., in the catering process value chain, often remain undiscovered. Therefore, this work combines system structural modeling with process behavioral modeling using the example of an aircraft galley. The galley system and the flight catering process are both described using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML), a modeling language standardized by the Object Management Group (OMG). The catering process is represented as a sequence of process steps involving the use of catering supplies, galley inserts (GAINs) for meal and beverage preparation, serving trolleys, working environment, energy requirements and human actors such as cabin crew. The process model enables formalization, analysis and comparison of different operating variants for business goal achievements and revenues increase. Each input and output of a process step can be parameterized with assumptions or expected values, allowing simulation and evaluation of process changes across multiple variants. By interaction between the process model with the system model, the approach demonstrates how operational behavior influences resource utilization and overall efficiency. This combined system and process perspective reveals opportunities for improvement that remain hidden in a pure structural description, which describes only the systems architecture, but not its behavior and use. Thus, combining system and process modeling supports more improved galley design and more efficient catering processes.