Use of Integrated Product Teams and Concurrent Engineering In NASA Today. By Joe Hamaker

Transcription

1 Use of Integrated Product Teams and Concurrent Engineering In NASA Today By Joe Hamaker Space Systems Cost Analysis Group ESA ESTEC May

2 Abstract The use of concurrent engineering in the aerospace industry has grown dramatically in the decade of the 1990 s. This paper briefly explores the impetus for the initiative in terms of promises of increased efficiency. The paper documents the history of NASA and the contractor community s use of teams which operate in a concurrent engineering environment. The sequential engineering process and the concurrent engineering process are contrasted. Benefits of concurrent engineering teams are examined and issues with the current state of the art implementation of the process are discussed. Introduction In the 1990 s NASA began experiencing significant downturns in budget availability due to Congressional emphasis on addressing the U.S. budget deficits (Figure 1). In addition to federal budget downturns, the U.S. aerospace industry was beginning to sense pressure for improvements from the quest for quality and cost competitiveness stemming from the globalization of the economy. In 1992, Dan Goldin, the newly appointed NASA Administrator, came on board with a mandate to substantially improve the efficiency with which the Agency performed space missions. Mr. Goldin began a number of initiatives designed to improve NASA s management culture 1. In billions of constant dollars National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA Fiscal year Simultaneous with the demand for ways to perform space projects more effectively, the U.S. aerospace industry was fortuitously beginning to adopt newly available engineering and management approaches, environments and methods for accomplishing project formulation and project implementation. Many of the practices sought to make better use of the workforce in this very labor intensive industry by using teamwork and computer tools. By the late 1990 s, most NASA field Centers and contractor organizations had begun using integrated teams operating in some type of concurrent engineering 1 These initiatives are often referred to as faster, better, cheaper. 2

3 environment 2. It is the intent of this paper to review the status and emerging benefits of this approach. Background on the Sequential Engineering Process Traditional space project engineering has very much been a series of sequential operations. Usually, a space project 3 requires that a number of discipline specialists contribute to the project. Typical disciplines utilized during design include structures, thermal control, communications and data handling, attitude control and navigation, electrical power generation and distribution, software, mission equipment (which can include various instruments such as sensors, telescopes, etc.), ground systems, systems engineering, project management, cost analyses, scheduling, budgeting/finance, accounting, marketing, etc. For the production phase, other expertise is needed including manufacturing, quality control, and tooling. And finally, to address operations, input is required on mission operations, sustaining engineering, logistics, etc. Even a simple space project can require cooperation of hundreds of different people. Done sequentially, it is perhaps not hard to understand that the whole process can take several years for complete design 4 and another year (or years) for production before the operations can even begin. This sequential engineering process, as it has been used for many years, generally would involve assigning the definition of a space project to a working group of engineers representing all the disciplines mentioned above. The group might meet once a week for working group meetings in which each engineer would present their work. The working group meeting would be for coordination while the real work would be accomplished afterwards in smaller meetings. Often, new directions for the group would have to be developed in reaction to what was learned. Between meetings, the engineers would operate independently to work off their individual action items. Communication between meetings would be sporadic, using telephone, memos, , one-on-one communication 2 While this paper will use the term concurrent engineering, there are many nearly synonymous terms including simultaneous engineering, product development teams, integrated product development teams, design-build teams, integrated process teams, cross-functional teams, integrated concurrent engineering, lean design, design for manufacturing (and assembly), integrated design systems and many others. 3 Here, space project refers to most any space flight mission or component of that mission. For example, scientific spacecraft, launch vehicles and satellite instruments are common space projects. Also, Shuttle cargo-bay missions or pieces and parts of the International Space Station are other examples of space projects. 4 Design can be misleading. Almost always, space projects go through several iterations of design. They are initially examined in a conceptual design to determine basic feasibility. Several iterations of the conceptual design might be done over several months. If the project is determined to be feasible both from an engineering and resources point of view, it is next subjected to a preliminary design phase, which again might involve many iterations, this time over a year or two. A project that passes muster in this stage, would then enter final detailed design which typically takes several years. 3

4 and occasional meetings between subsets of the entire group. This entire process would be iterated until a closed design 5 would be obtained. The Origins of Concurrent Engineering Use in NASA Taking a clue from other industries, including the Japanese and American automobile companies which had experienced success in working in teams, as well as the body of work on Total Quality Management, the aerospace literature began to address teams working in concurrent engineering environments in the mid to late 1980 s. NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory 6 (JPL) was the first NASA organization to install a concurrent engineering capability. JPL first inaugurated a facility for concurrent engineering, called the Project Design Center, in June of 1994 [Sercel, Smith]. In April of 1995, JPL chartered a concurrent engineering team, formally called the Advanced Project Design Team but soon dubbed Team X [Rutledge, Smith]. Team X soon claimed the design center as their home and were performing spacecraft and integrated mission designs and analysis in one t two weeks including CAD drawings, performance specifications, functional block diagrams, parts lists, cost estimates, mission profiles, and documentation. Sometime after Team X s debut, another JPL group called Team I began with the purpose of doing spacecraft instrument proposals. Team I does conceptual design studies of instruments, trying to get to fairly rigorous detail (what NASA calls Preliminary Design Review or PDR level) for instrument definitions for proposals in two weeks. Where, before Team I, JPL had been able to perform about 10 instrument proposals a year, with the advent of Team I they were able to churn out around 50 proposals per year with improved quality in each. Over the past five years, JPL has continued to refine the Team X and Team I processes and still are widely considered to be the state of the art NASA implementation of the idea. The JPL teams are standing teams, recruited from the engineering divisions and expected to serve for about 2 years. A customer organization desiring to use the approach, contracts with the team for their services to generate a design or a proposal. The customer (the project manager or proposal manager) is expected to be physically present during the design process. A conceptual design is generated including cost and other metrics, modifications are proposed by team members or by the customer, and adjustments are examined in real time, with requirements and cost 7 being part of the trade 5 A closed design is a design solution that meets the specified requirements and is internally rationale in the sense that all engineering and management parameters seem to be doable and make sense. One NASA design engineer has been quoted that the design solution really should not violate over 3 known laws of physics to be considered closed. 6 JPL, a psuedo NASA field center operated for NASA by the University of California, is curiously named since the organization works on neither jets nor large scale propulsion. JPL has historically been responsible for NASA s planetary spacecraft projects. 7 This process is called Design to Cost (DTC) by NASA. A related approach has been evolved in the Department of Defense termed Cost as an Independent Variable (CAIV). Both DTC and CAIV seek to include most all technical requirements and programmatic requirements (such as cost, schedule and risk) in 4

5 space. One notable project on which JPL used their concurrent engineering approach was the highly successful Mars Pathfinder [Clawson]. While JPL led the way, by the late mid to late 1990 s several other NASA field centers had installed design centers. Ames Research Center is using concurrent engineering in an integrated analysis environment for designing planetary entry vehicles [Allen]. Marshall Space Flight Center is using the approach for designed space transportation systems. A number of NASA and Defense Department contractors have active design centers using concurrent engineering as well. Boeing Huntington Beach (formerly McDonnell Douglas) has been using their capability since A TRW tool, active since 1997, includes a virtual reality capability which allows engineers to walk through the geometry. Boeing Seattle used concurrent engineering in the design of their newest passenger airplane, the 777. The Boeing system links various analytical tools and nonanalytical data bases such as those for requirements, configuration management etc. Boeing Phantom Works in St. Louis and Lockheed also have operational facilities. John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory used concurrent engineering on NASA s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) project [Dettmer] The Benefits Of Concurrent Engineering The most basic benefit of the concurrent engineering process is the enhanced communications that is fostered between the members of the team. In the historical patterns of sequential engineering, the project is designed by one set of engineers, manufactured by another and then operated by still a third set of personnel. In the concurrent engineering paradigm, all three life cycle phases of a project are represented by team members are taken into account throughout the design and build sequence. The manufacturing and operational implications of design choices are evaluated because manufacturing, tooling, quality personnel and operations personnel are included on the team. Theoretically at least, a product is designed in such a way that it can be more efficiently manufactured and efficiently operated. Other multifunctional synergism aspects of the concurrent engineering approach include communication between marketing, engineering, cost estimating, accounting, procurement all affected disciplines can be brought into the concurrent engineering environment and all these parties can be represented from project start to project finish. In addition, the team can include customer and supplier/subcontractor representatives to help ensure that customer requirements are captured and that supplier and subcontractor buy-in is obtained to the maximum extent possible. While team members are usually still functionally assigned to their home organization, they devote dedicated blocks of time to the team meeting and are empowered to perform work and make decisions consistent with team goals. The normal disadvantages of matrix management can be alleviated to the trade space. One subtle difference between DTC and CAIV is that CAIV tends to address long term operational cost in the equation a particularly important point for defense projects with their long and expensive operational phases. 5

6 some extent due to the team being sequestered the concurrent engineering environment for the period of time dedicated to the task at hand. The advances in modern computing environments over the past decade have considerably enhanced the effectiveness of the concurrent engineering concept. With computerized tools, some of these off-line analyses can be done much more quickly than in the past including requirements tracking, process specification, test and analysis, cost estimation and documentation. Computers also make sharing of many types of information possible including parts and component databases from suppliers, CAD system communications, spreadsheets, etc. Reports in the literature on the quantification of benefits are wide ranging and, because of different reporting groundrules and terms of reference, difficult to normalize and compare. However, ranges of savings are 30-50% reductions in development time, 65-90% fewer engineering changes and up to 50% cost reductions [Singh]. Issues with Concurrent Engineering Some original emphasis in the field of concurrent engineering was misplaced on installing high-end design systems in expensive new facilities. After suffering some sobering failures, the focus has shifted to a walk before you run philosophy in which standard desktop computer software and simple networked facilities are being used. Successful implementations have been made with a simple facility with good modular furniture, networked computers with standard office software and with seats for each discipline, the customer, the team lead. Provisions are needed for graphics, video, telephone, sub-team meeting areas. Passing information via electronic spreadsheets has been shown to be an effective way to start [Rutledge]. UNIX based systems such as complex CAD/CAM models which take long periods of time and enormous amounts of data can come later for final design work such systems rarely work adeptly enough to be useful in the real time setting of most beginning concurrent engineering environments. Proprietary data formats of the various commercial CAD packages and converting between data formats is a frequent problem as well. The difficulty of getting computer tools to work together in an integrated fashion should not be overlooked. The integration of hardware and software engineering and the widely divergent practices of these two disciplines is a continuing problem. The recent failure of JPL s Mars Climate Surveyor English due to a translation problem between metric and English units is a case in point. Software reuse is important to avoid long start of transients in getting a concurrent engineering capability up and running. A strategy of linking specialized engineering software tools using visual programming languages or standard interface protocols has proven successful in many implementations. 6

7 There are issues in concurrent engineering concerning the capture corporate knowledge expert systems so far have not been successful at capturing the knowledge nuances of highly experienced engineers. And there is the whole issue of the human ability to deal with the large amounts of information that are flowing in concurrent engineering settings. Overall, the key to concurrent engineering is to get the interdisciplinary teams working together by any means in order to meld the expertise of individual specialists into a coherent whole. Team training and team awards, as opposed to individual awards, are important. The team leader must be especially adept at managing a team to ensure that strong personalities don t dominate. Because it is difficult for functional managers to know what their employees are contributing and how to award them, ways must be found to keep functional managers informed of the concurrent engineering team s progress. Conclusions The is good evidence that the aerospace industry has improved its engineering management efficiency over the past decade. While many reasons can be cited, the widespread use of teams operating in concurrent engineering environments is a contributing factor. As more experienced is gained with this approach and as systems designed in this manner are fielded operationally, the benefits of concurrent engineering should only increase. 7

8 References [1] Allen, Garu A., Jr., A Web-based Analysis System for Planetary Entry Vehicle Design, AIAA/USAF/NASA/ISSMO Symposium on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization, St. Louis, MO, September 1998 [2] Clawson, James F., Mars Pathfinder Common Sense Mission Assurance, IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings, Vol. 5, Piscataway, NJ, March 1998 [3] Dettmer, Jay R., Cooperative Fabrication of the NEAR Spacecraft, Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest, Vol. 19, No. 2, p , April-June 1998 [4] Oxnevad, Knut I., Concurrent Design Used in the Design of Space Instruments, Proceedings of the Seventh International Space University Alumni Conference, July 1998 [5] Rowe, Sidney, An Example of Concurrent Engineering, AIAA Paper, Defense and Civil Space Programs, MSFC, Huntsville, AL, 1998 [6] Rutledge, William R., Integrated Design Center Team M, Briefing to Marshall Space Flight Center by Science Applications International Corporation, August 1998 [7] Sercel, Joel, ICE Heats Up Design Productivity, Aerospace America, Vol. 35, No. 7, p , July 1998 [8] Singh, Kamar J., Concurrent Engineering: Institution, Infrastructure and Implementation, International Journal of Technology Management, Volume 14, p , June 1997 [9] Smith, Jeffrey L., Concurrent Engineering in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Project Design Center, SAE Aerospace Manufacturing Technology Conference and Exposition, Long Beach, CA,