A DFX ATTRIBUTION METHOD APPLIED TO INTEGRATED PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT WITHIN THE AEROSPACE DOMAIN

The aerospace industry constantly seeks to optimize its product development processes to stay competitive in the market. Design for Excellence (DFX) with its various technological areas, tools and methods play an essential role to allow meeting customer expectations while respecting organizational capabilities. However, the quantity and diversity of DFX technological areas and methods make sometimes difficult for the companies to address the appropriate ones for each project. Success in DFX application, keeping product development within scope, time, cost, and quality while not overloading it by applying, monitoring, and managing too many areas, is sometimes very context-dependent, being influenced by the experience of the engineering team as well as the kind of project portfolio or project phase. Considering this scenario, the motivation of this work is to perform a mapping of the technological areas of the DFX, given the decision-making problem of selecting the most appropriate for each kind of project. The objective is to evaluate, according to the point of view of the engineering team, if it is possible to define a general approach to guide, at least initially, project managers in selecting the main technological areas of the DFX, given a typical aerospace organization project portfolio as the boundary condition, and considering special characteristics in each phase of a project lifecycle. Departing from the literature review of the main technological areas of DFX used in the aerospace domain, the research is performed by means of a survey with senior product development engineers from a real aerospace company. Then, quantitative results are gathered through the Likert scale, which allows to draw a hierarchization analysis based on the multicriteria Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). A method to indicate the initial choice for the DFX area is presented, which is deemed to be suitable to help project managers and engineers during design of complex products

Space Mission Architecture Trade off Based on Stakeholder Value

Abstract. One the most difficult aspects of system conceptualization process is to recognize, understand and manage the trade-offs in a way that maximizes the success of the product. This is particularly important for space projects. In this way, a major part of the system engineer's role is to provide information that the system manager can use to make the right decisions. This includes identification of alternative architectures and characterization of those elements in a way that helps managers to find out, among the alternatives, a design that provides a better combination of the various technical areas involved in the design. Space mission architecture consists of a broad system concept which is the most fundamental statement of how the mission will be carried out and satisfy the stakeholders. The architecture development process starts with the stakeholder analysis which enables the identification of the decision drivers, then, the requirements are analysed for elaborationg the system concept. Effectiveness parameters such as performance, cost, risk and schedule are the outcomes of the stakeholder analysis which are labelled as decision drivers to be used in a trade off process to improve the managerial mission decisions. Thus, the proposal presented herein provides a means for innovating the mission design process by identifying drivers through stakeholder analysis and use them in a trade off process to obtain the stakeholder satisfaction with effectiveness parameters

Functional Mapping as Means for Establishing a Human Factors Research Environment for Future Air Systems

A typical environment for human factors research has equipment and methods for performing a set of experiments such as mental workload assessment, situational awareness evaluation, human resilience measurement and so forth. The common aspect between equipment and methods is that they accomplish a function. The TLX method is part of such an environment because it evaluates the mental workload; an EEG helmet is part of the same research environment because it measures the electrical activity originated by the brain. If the functional structure of a method or equipment is yet to be known, a method for function deployment might be used to this purpose such as FAST. Although cognitive processes in many regards are very different from functions in technical systems, it is possible to describe them in terms of functions for the sake using it for design considerations. For instance, the information-processing paradigm has inspired descriptions that in some regards could be described in functional terms. The multiple resource theory that outlines different mental resources related to various modalities and stages of processing is another example of that. Then a functional mapping engine identifies the equipment and method that address the cognitive functions required for a given experiment. A very simple example of functional mapping is as follows: the cognitive module <vision> has a function X {to track objects}. The equipment *eye tracker* and the method # EPOG – Eye Point of Gaze# have the functions Y [To look at through computer vision] and Z [to track objects]. The mapping among functions X, Y and Z indicate the equipment and method are suitable for addressing the cognitive characteristic under investigation. On the one hand, if an equipment or method do exist, then the functional mapping assist the research environment designer to identify them and help choosing if several options are available. On the other hand, if an equipment or method do not exist, then the functional mapping assist the research environment designer to design and build them. Moving forward from the very simple example to a more practical and realistic situation, the functional mapping can tackle the issues of choosing the necessary functions – from both sides, cognitive and equipment and methods – to meet fidelity requirements of an experiment. This is suggested to be resolved by the cost-benefit trade-off approach detailed as follows. Based on the functional mapping, selective fidelity can be obtained for modeling and simulation considerations. Thereby advantages and disadvantages of the human factors research environment for future air systems could be balanced by the functional mapping, potentially optimizing the use of simulations. System border definition ought to be considered; the border definition practice borrowed from aircraft product/system configuration can be used to this end. Selective fidelity has been applied to transfer of training in military aviation and simulator based design has been shown to be useful for development of air systems. The proposed functional mapping approach could have the potential of adding to this tradition.Design and Comissioning of a Human Factors Laboratory for Aeronautic

Functional Mapping as Means for Establishing a Human Factors Research Environment for Future Air Systems

A typical environment for human factors research has equipment and methods for performing a set of experiments such as mental workload assessment, situational awareness evaluation, human resilience measurement and so forth. The common aspect between equipment and methods is that they accomplish a function. The TLX method is part of such an environment because it evaluates the mental workload; an EEG helmet is part of the same research environment because it measures the electrical activity originated by the brain. If the functional structure of a method or equipment is yet to be known, a method for function deployment might be used to this purpose such as FAST. Although cognitive processes in many regards are very different from functions in technical systems, it is possible to describe them in terms of functions for the sake using it for design considerations. For instance, the information-processing paradigm has inspired descriptions that in some regards could be described in functional terms. The multiple resource theory that outlines different mental resources related to various modalities and stages of processing is another example of that. Then a functional mapping engine identifies the equipment and method that address the cognitive functions required for a given experiment. A very simple example of functional mapping is as follows: the cognitive module <vision> has a function X {to track objects}. The equipment *eye tracker* and the method # EPOG – Eye Point of Gaze# have the functions Y [To look at through computer vision] and Z [to track objects]. The mapping among functions X, Y and Z indicate the equipment and method are suitable for addressing the cognitive characteristic under investigation. On the one hand, if an equipment or method do exist, then the functional mapping assist the research environment designer to identify them and help choosing if several options are available. On the other hand, if an equipment or method do not exist, then the functional mapping assist the research environment designer to design and build them. Moving forward from the very simple example to a more practical and realistic situation, the functional mapping can tackle the issues of choosing the necessary functions – from both sides, cognitive and equipment and methods – to meet fidelity requirements of an experiment. This is suggested to be resolved by the cost-benefit trade-off approach detailed as follows. Based on the functional mapping, selective fidelity can be obtained for modeling and simulation considerations. Thereby advantages and disadvantages of the human factors research environment for future air systems could be balanced by the functional mapping, potentially optimizing the use of simulations. System border definition ought to be considered; the border definition practice borrowed from aircraft product/system configuration can be used to this end. Selective fidelity has been applied to transfer of training in military aviation and simulator based design has been shown to be useful for development of air systems. The proposed functional mapping approach could have the potential of adding to this tradition.Design and Comissioning of a Human Factors Laboratory for Aeronautic

Completeness of Development Projects Assisted by QFD: a Case Study

To assess the completeness of a Business Development Project (BDP) is not a simple task. The usage of some design method such as QFD eases but does not solve completely the problem, because the information displayed in the QFD matrices is highly dependent of the experience and intuition of the design team. This paper presents a case study of a BDP, where the completeness of the project was assessed through a slightly modified view of QFD: instead of looking at the market requirements themselves, it is proposed to find out the ways the requirements are accomplished. This procedure made possible the identification of the not covered portion of the market requirements and guided the project revision.Pages: 692-69

Knowledge Management Patterns Model for a Flight Test Environment

This paper investigates how Knowledge Management patterns in a Brazilian Air Force flight test environment can be simulated using a System Dynamics approach. The research has been conducted initially by a literature review on the main Knowledge Management and System Dynamics theories. Data for this research has been collected in a previous study consisted of documental research regarding the flight test environment Knowledge Management and a questionnaire-based survey which identified both a low Knowledge Management maturity level and the flight test core competence as the capability of performing flight test campaigns. The issued problem was the tradeoff between actions focused on performing flight test campaigns versus Knowledge Management to transfer the core competence inside organization in order to keep it in a high level. A system dynamics qualitative model has been developed as a result of this research. Fluxes and stokes were identified within the model and the relation between them emerged by identifying systemic feedback loops that may compromise the Knowledge Management and the core competence transferring. These features enable a holistic visualization and better understanding of the problem as well as the possibilities of identifying ways of improvement

Postponement planning and implementation from CE perspective

Nowadays manufacturing companies are facing the challenge of attending most specific customer desires and even so, to offer short delivery times and low price. Companies must have flexibility to customize products in a rapid way. A product customization strategy, named Postponement, has been adopted by a growing number of companies to address these products differentiation requirements, demanded by the new global market. This paper aims to review the available literature about the postponement strategy, comparing the several approaches from different authors, to observe how the postponement is described in terms of its benefits, implementation barriers, factors that enable or make difficult its practice, the relationship with other theories and techniques, the tools used to support the postponements planning and implementation. Through this review, it is intended to identify the contribution given by a proposed method to plan and implement the postponement strategy in an aerospace company, from the concurrent engineering perspective.Pages: 291-29

Aircraft Preventive Maintenance Data Evaluation Applied in Integrated Product Development Process

<div><p>ABSTRACT: Initial Maintenance Review Board Report (MRBR) uses in service operation experience as a reference to define maintenance tasks intervals. However, in general, there is no structured data to compare systems performance and provide useful information to the analysts' decision-making. Even when engineering judgment is based on certification process, structural design, components intrinsic reliability and so on, the analysts responsible for maintenance tasks definitions tend to choose rather conservative proposals. This article presents a method to optimize preventive maintenance tasks intervals and use structured data based on interval optimization process to define maintenance intervals to those of similar systems under development. The method has been applied in an aircraft manufacturing company using current operation database after regulatory authorities' approval. As a result, it has been feasible to propose to the selected system, a maintenance task interval 100% higher than the one applicable to a similar system under operation.</p></div

Agile Management in Product Development

Agile emerged in software development in the 1990s and became popular mainly after the issue of the Agile Manifesto by Beck and coauthors in 2001. Influenced by the culture of value maximization and waste reduction that found its first expression in lean manufacturing, Agile’s methods contrast with traditional methods of software engineering, which tend to be bureaucratic and hierarchical. Agile values include collaboration, team empowerment, iterative and incremental development, increased customer engagement, and adaptability to change