A pragmatic Approach for Knowledge Management

Paper number

IAC-08.D5.2.8

Author

Mr. Siegmar Pallaschke, European Space Agency (ESA), Germany

Coauthor

Ms. Roberta Mugellesi-Dow, European Space Agency (ESA), Germany

Year

2008

Abstract

Co-Authors: Gino Armuzzi ( Mercer Company, Milan, Italy), Roberta Mugellesi-Dow
(ESA/ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany)



Within the past years several steps were undertaken towards the introduction
of a knowledge management system at ESOC, the European Space Operations
Centre. During the previous year a pilot project was initiated within the
Flight Dynamics area (a key technical domain within ESOC taking care of the
orbit- and attitude aspects for the satellite operations) with respect to the
questions of knowledge transfer and its barriers. Based on the positive
outcome of this pilot project a fundamental knowledge management approach was
commenced in November 2007. The basic steps within the current fundamental
knowledge management approach are the coverage- and criticality analysis of
the individual technical domains of ESOC. The individual technical domains of
ESOC are briefly described in the subsequent paragraph.

ESOC is located at Darmstadt, Germany and is an establishment of the European
Space Agency (ESA). ESOC is responsible for the operations of the European
satellites. These operations include the following major technical domains
(only the technical ones are mentioned here):
- Set up of ground stations, communications network between the ground
stations and ESOC, as well as the entire operations;
- Mission control systems;
- Flight mechanics covering the celestial and the spacecraft dynamic part and
the
- Actual mission operations (spacecraft/ payload).
The knowledge management approach includes the breakdown of the technical
domains in knowledge areas, fields and components. The definition of the
roles and responsibilities such as the technical domain assistant, the
knowledge area leader and the core team is an essential part of the pragmatic
approach.

As mentioned above, the basic steps within the current fundamental knowledge
management approach are the coverage- and criticality analysis of the
individual technical domains of ESOC. Of course the set-up for this analysis
could not be obtained off the shelf, it had to be designed for the ESOC
spacecraft operations environment specifically. The design was driven by the
goals of completeness and correctness and on this basis the necessary forms/
questionnaires were worked out. However, it was experienced that the detailed
coverage analysis caused too many hurdles and hence numerous iterations were
carried out before a compromise between effort required and information
provided could be found. Simplicity was the term which made the process
working.

The proposed contribution will describe the initial design of the coverage-
and criticality analysis  as well as the end product. The changes and the
reasoning for the changes will be outlined. Based on this practical
experience guidelines will be derived for the introduction of a knowledge
management system and in particular for the coverage analysis. The proposed
paper will also show the results of the analysis.

Abstract document

IAC-08.D5.2.8.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-08.D5.2.8.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.