Mission Lifecycle Management: integrating people, data and systems
- Paper number
IAC-06-D1.3.03
- Author
Mr. Julien Feyeux, Processia Solutions Inc., Canada
- Year
2006
- Abstract
This article presents an integrated approach of managing mission-related data. Missions, just like organizations supporting them, are complex systems. Several real-life examples have demonstrated that to get more of them successful, organizations need more insight, more control, and more traceability. To achieve this goal, organizations need to capture, share and reuse information extensively, be it from a technical or from a business perspective. All stakeholders should be able to exchange as much as possible to make sure that they can synchronize their work toward the same objective: mission success. This has been common reality for decades, but today, technical barriers are dramatically lowered by new information systems, like Product Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Supply Chain Management, and others. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has been around for some years now, particularly in the automobile and aeronautics industries. It is expected to grow again between 12 and 15 percent in the next months (www.technologyevaluation.com). However, the space sector has not yet grasped the full benefit of using such an approach. Concurrent Engineering (CE) is an important component of PLM, and several organizations are now comfortable with this approach (ESTEC, JPL…). What PLM allows today is to leverage CE into a complete technical data backbone for the missions. This paper will focus on how a PLM approach can be custom-tuned for the space sector to form a real Mission Lifecycle Management. Generic benefits of a PLM approach include: business processes optimization, single data entry for multiple reuses, and accurate and up-to-date data. Particularities of the space sector include: a strong need for procedures support, global product development facilitation, a need for better ROI due to budgets and public interest shrinking, and a requirement of improved collaboration due to a growing trend towards multiple private endeavors rather than only space agencies led programs. While this paper aims at proposing a complete approach for sharing mission-related data across participating organizations, we will focus on real-world tools and applications that can help meet the business needs. This will help the reader translate concepts into practical business decisions. We will review what makes a Mission Lifecycle Management approach so critical these days, and analyze how space industries can leverage existing PLM experience (like in aeronautics and automobile) to enhance efficiency and success rate among missions.
- Abstract document