Application of Lean Engineering Principles to Space Mission Development SECESA 2010 13-15 October 2010

Kian Yazdi (1), Torsten Bieler (2) EADS Astrium Satellites Claude-Dornier Strae, 88039 Friedrichshafen, Germany E-mail: kian.yazdi@astrium.eads.net ESA-ESTEC Keplerlaan 1, PO Box 299, 2200AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands E-mail: torsten.bieler@esa.int
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INTRODUCTION Lean is a mindset and a collection of strategies, tools, techniques and behaviours that are used to differentiate between value-adding and non-value-adding activities with the goal of eliminating or minimising the non-value-adding ones. Lean Engineering (LE) aims for a continuous process improvement of the entire product development process. Lean's origins lie in the automotive Industry, namely Toyota Motor Company, with specific solutions for the manufacturing and production domain and spreading out from Japan to many other countries, especially in the USA and Europe. Its foundations principles however seem universally and in fact were applied already in various Industrial areas such as Aeronautical Industry (Boeing, Airbus) and other domains as for example Medical Health Care. To investigate "Lean in Space" Astrium Satellites has conducted on behalf of ESA a first general study on LE, i.e. to assess its application to space engineering activities and evaluate potential benefits. The ten month activity was structured in three parts: 1) Assess the State of the Art of LE; 2) Evaluate of Applications and Methods; 3) Investigate and Recommend Future Activities. Lean experts from Astrium and Airbus summarised Lean principles, methods and tools and outlined the general objectives. Past and current applications and benefits were discussed. Then, potential improvement opportunities within ESA projects were evaluated including using a questionnaire and interviews to do a first localisation of process steps that seem to be connected to an important level of inefficiency. Here, the entire project life cycle was aimed at, especially phases B/C/D but also Phase A/B and interactions in between. Industrial processes as well as external workflows, e.g. involving subcontractors or the Customer, were both addressed and a number of issues revealed that should be addressed in future ESA activities on Lean. LEAN OBJECTIVES AND APPLICATION RATIONALES Lean thinking is meant to increase the net creation of value in a process and elimination of non-value adding component of processes and activities. Special attention is put on three typical types of inefficiency: Waste, Overburden, and unnecessary Variation, also known as the three M's (jp. Muda, Muri, Mura).

Fig. 1. Muda, Muri and Mura, or the three typical types of inefficiency: Waste, Overburden and unnecessary Variation There are a number of guiding principles for a Lean thinker that - if fully embraced and understood - provide a basic contextual reference for transforming mindsets and behaviors of an organization:

Taking a long term view of the business Think slowly and thoroughly, execute the improvements quickly Simplify and Standardise Stop, to fix problems so they never return Never pass on a Quality defect Capture Knowledge and exploit widely Produce everything, not just products, 'Just in Time'

Respect and grow your people Focus processes Go-look-see (go to the problem to deeply understand before making decisions) Eliminate Waste Eliminate Variation Eliminate Overburden Continuously Improve

These guiding principles are universally applicable. Lean Engineering (LE) targets specifically to the product design and development part of projects. To put a high degree of attention to this is more than justified assuming the absolute influence for those processes and the quality of their results have to the total cost of product (see figure below).

Fig. 2. Contributors of different project elements and their influence to the total cost in engineering dominated Industry In the context of building a competitive and successful Industrial organisation in mid to long-terms and maintain this status Lean Engineering offers an improvement tool for business leaders as well as an important contributor to establish and maintain sustainable working practices. LE therefore differs in this aspect from the more widely known Lean Management and Lean Manufacturing. Basic Elements Toyota is the global reference that all other Lean-oriented organisations use as the basis for a Lean implementation. It is testimony to the validity of the Lean mindset (although this is not a word used by Toyota but one applied in the US to try to describe the phenomena) that so many diverse organisations across the globe are using the principles established over the last 50 years within Toyota to seek fundamental and sustainable improvements within their businesses.

Fig. 3. The Toyota Way and its 5 foundation blocks Within Toyota Lean is referred to as the Toyota Way, being a collection of values, behaviours and techniques, which are practiced with absolute commitment from top to bottom within the business, and have delivered astonishing corporate success. It is not a change programme or a cost down initiative but more a way of life that is relentless in its ambition for continuous improvement, in all aspects of the business: Better products, lower costs, passionate employees, social responsibility etc. Challenge refers to the notion that there shall always be a justification for the way things are done. A culture that welcomes improvement suggestions is essential. Kaizen means continuous improvement and is the synonym for being watchful and strive for perfection - a little bit every day. Genchi Genbutsu means "Go and see for yourself" and asks managers to walk the process themselves rather than asking for reports people deliver to them. Respect is assumed to be the universal enabler for building long-term relationships and trust in an Industrial organism, i.e. inside and across the organisations. Teamwork is commonly accepted as to be the enabler for increasing the performance beyond what a group of individuals can achieve working separately. Exceptional teams build on exceptional individuals; them working together in an organized and conscious way empower for delivering quality products and improve the way of working. So in general terms Lean is a collection of strategies, tools, techniques and behaviours / mindsets, which - if applied as a connected portfolio of interrelated and mutually supportive elements - release the full potential of Lean thinking. The basic characteristics of a business that might be described as Lean would be that; 1. A culture of continuous improvement was evident within the workforce and with minimal stimulation would be striving every day to make operational improvements. 2. The focus would be on waste removal, i.e. not necessarily trying to make the value add aspect faster, just trying to connect the value elements closely together, to ensure the minimum effort and time to produce the end result. 3. The most important factor is result aimed at and this would be provided by the Customers. Ensuring that satisfied customers are the ultimate reward for the efforts expended within the business.

Fig. 4. Enabler, Action and Result of Lean Implementation

Muda, Muri and Mura (3Ms) The three M's name the generally acknowledged types of inefficiency within businesses: Waste, Overburden and unnecessary Variation. All are briefly introduced here but only the Waste will be described in more detail in the following: Waste, is a broad term used to describe anything which adds unnecessary time or cost to the generation of the product or a service. Toyota established 7 categories that can be used to help understand and identify waste within just about any business. In our Lean study [1] we have tailored these slightly to fit into the context of Space mission development. Overburden is a very difficult aspect for businesses to achieve the right balance. Too little work is underproductive and hence wasteful, too much produces overburden, which then produces delays, errors and other wastes as a result of trying to recover from or cope with the overburden. Overburden can be man, machine, or process-related, basically its trying to achieve too much from a resource (process or people), which is either not designed to produce at that performance (e.g. volume, accuracy etc), or is physically incapable. The people aspect of overburden is perhaps the most important to identify, as the end result has wider implications in stress related mistakes or absences and takes more effort to resolve if left unchecked. Unnecessary Variation, or doing things differently, is a form of inefficiency that can affect both your processes and products. For example, different fastener types or different tools used when one would do. Different ways of performing a task, with potentially different outcomes in terms of time or quality is another example. There is a multitude of manifestations of this form of inefficiency in every company. The solution is principally simplestandardisation, namely of processes, format templates, products, parts, design solutions and features etc. But, beware of the risk of the workforce perceiving that innovation as stifling; variation reduction is about consistency and repeatability in quality, time and cost, its not about preventing people from creating new standards that improve on the current standard. Waste and its Identification Waste is sometimes a difficult thing to identify and sometimes, the closer to the activity you are, the harder it is to be objective about the activity and its true worth to the business or more importantly the Customer. It might seem a very simple concept but being able to differentiate between value and non-value activities requires practice, or a least the willingness to be truly objective about the status quo. Quite often people are waste blind because they fail to differentiate the steps in the existing process from those that only add value from the Customers perspective.

Fig. 5. Definition of Value Adding and Waste Enabler, Action and Result of Lean Implementation Most businesses whether large or small evolve and grow over time. With this growth come iterations in working practices and procedures, this can build into significantly more complex processes than the end product needs ensuring the required quality. In many cases - especially in larger businesses - this process complexity becomes more important to master than the technicalities of the individuals role. This can even apply to business units or departments that evolve and change over time to service the perceived business needs and eventually loose clarity on their real purpose or value-add. So whether

its process efficiency improvements or wholesale departmental or company reflection to re-establish direction and purpose, the identification of value / non-value-add is always difficult for the people closest to it. The difficulty in waste removal is generally people oriented, its not that things cant change, there are always different ways of doing things. Its more likely that the people involved have a personal interest in the current way of doing things and this is where the reluctance originates. If however you have a "change culture" in the organization that encourages and rewards (emotionally) continuous improvement, then it becomes a natural and non-threatening part of the way the business and its people operate. LEAN TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES Solving problems is what most businesses would say they do every day. In reality most organisations are simply dealing with their problems. The difference is that a problem that is solved never returns, and hence never produces future disruption, delay or variation that needs unnecessary time or effort to correct. Solving problems requires discipline, rigor and attention to detail, it also requires time. Time is the enemy of improvement; most organisations fail to invest the required time to investigate problems fully, causing an approach to dealing with problems which amounts to symptom fixing. In other words, making quick uninformed decisions and setting inappropriate actions, this wont fix the root cause and consume time and effort for little long-term reward in terms of future stability. Root-cause-problem solving appears on face value to be obvious and simple, in principle it is. The difficult aspect is adopting a culture (both managerially and operationally) that supports it and enforces the required discipline and rigour in its application. The following table just lists a list of many Lean tools, some commonly applied in various cases and often not directly associated with Lean by their users, but still providing real benefits. Skills Matrices Robust Design Visual Management Level Scheduling Focused Lean Projects 5 Why's 8 Disciplines TAKT Time Line Balancing Kaizen A3 Reports 7 Quality Kanban FMEA 5S Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) Design of Experiments (DoE) Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Value Stream Mapping (VSM) "Day in the Life of" (DILO)

What needs to be understood is that, although these tools and technique provide benefits even when applied in isolation and can help raise awareness and acceptance of Lean principles application, the real benefits of the Lean approach are only accessible when embedded in an application of the Lean philosophy. This means, the associated mindset must be understood and infused into the workforce. The dominating behaviours and their effects have to be looked at and the problems have to be identified. THEN, tools and techniques can be applied to analyse the root cause, identify and implement solutions. LEAN IMPROVEMENT POTENTIALS IN SPACE For an application of Lean principles in the space domain one may refer to the specificities that exist, such as the prototype production, multi-site environment and the often referred to "culture of perfection" and its justification because the is "no right to fail in orbit". In this respect we may also can recognise that space business is actually moving from the prototype character towards an Industrial character, driven by market cost constraints (commercial or export) and new trends of higher volumes such as required in the case of the Galileo satellite navigation constellation. Previous Experiences with Lean Lean principles were already evaluated and applied at different scales in space Industry in Europe as well as outside. EADS Astrium has launched for example a number Lean initiatives since the mid-2000's within the launcher, telecom and satellite equipment areas. Lean benefits achieved to date are observed with improvement of early quality by establishment of standardisation, design rules, check lists, etc. Also, the development of a Lean spirit within the concerned teams improved knowledge and communication between teams at different sites and enables to develop a continuous improvement culture. The more, the implementation on three first pilots showed that the outputs are delivered on time and the expenditures were in accordance with the cost brochure that included some Lean saving estimation. Besides, the development of a new Lean spirit and better communication and knowledge between the teams is perceived as a facilitator for continuous improvement.

Improvement Opportunities by Lean To identify further Lean opportunities for improving space mission development, the study team performed a survey among a heterogeneous group of selected people in Astrium and ESA. Among these were project managers, systems engineering managers, discipline-specific leaders and experts. Four leading questions were used to get first responses, trigger a discussion and to guide through the interviews. The resulting dominating wastes reported where mainly; 1. Inventory, referring to stocking of material or information that is not being used. It can therefore be closely connected with waste 1 (over production) that directly results in inventory to build up. Examples in product development are batching, system/people over utilisation, variation of arrival times of material or data. The problem is that critical information may not be clearly visible when required. By the time they get realised it is likely too late and they already caused re-work and long lead times. Re-work (errors), referring to re-design and unnecessary iterations caused by using immature designs or information. Late engineering changes at one point of the system imply heavy re-work and re-design at another. Search, referring to spending excess time for retrieval of the right knowledge, which is known to exist, but is not readily available to perform or complete a task. Over-Engineering (or more generally known as 'over-processing') is referring to unnecessary activity on a tasks or simply unnecessary tasks. Here, re-invention, excess tool use, process variation (lack of standardisation) and optimisation beyond what is really required ('gold-plating') are typical examples. Also, designing and testing new components instead of using carry-over where it would be possible (deliberately or forcingly) are common reasons. Another example is unnecessary negotiations that transpire while selecting and managing suppliers.

2.

3. 4.

The principal problem observed that needs long-term resolution is a poor cost and schedule adherence in some ESA projects. The findings above among others were analysed and used to define possible next steps recommended to be taken in order to facilitate introduction and utilising of the promising Lean philosophy into Space project development. Here, three possible future activities were outlined and presented to ESA in more detail as typical examples of the available range of possibilities. As for the outcome we conclude that the above observations are results from a lack of focus to essentials during the definition and development phase and a lack of synchronisation among all parties. These are obviously topics that cannot be influenced or solved by Industry or the Agency alone, but both working together. The three top-level recommendations here are: 1. Front-Loading, i.e. spending better effort and employ the key skills of the organisation in the early phases A and B of projects. This shall enable sustainable, more mature mission concepts and system specifications at the start of implementation, instead of fire-fighting downstream. 2. More and Smart Re-use, i.e. putting emphasis on essentials. Do not include unnecessarily new technologies, work with known solutions and standards where possible to eliminate unnecessary risks and limit the mission development risk to the minimum. Also, capturing knowledge and experiences (lessons learned) more effectively and making it accessible in the project environment is essential. 3. Doing Integrated Concurrent Engineering in implementation projects refers to answering the need for improved coordination and synchronisation within the project team. Organising and performing engineering working sessions (not only 'meetings') on critical topics having global impact on the system/mission is vital. This would be even amplified when applied beyond the borders of a single organisation but across the organisations including customer and equipment suppliers.
Conventional Lean Number of People

Knowledge

Start of Production

Experience

Solutions

Fig. 1. The analysis of Lean principles for Space application resulted in front-loading, smart re-use, and performing improved CE in projects being among the top recommendations for improved Space Mission Development

Regarding Integrated Concurrent Engineering, we identify this as one powerful tool to achieve Lean objectives. As a systems engineering approach it provides methods and tools to tackle complex interdisciplinary tasks in an efficient and effective manner, such as; Requirements analysis and consolidation Re-use analysis Risk identification and maturity-based Risk Management Trade-offs and Decision-making of issues having global impact Cross-coordination for essential topics that requires common agreement Work-planning and scheduling Controlling change to technical baselines Etc.

Assuming appropriate preparation and having the key expertise at hand, integrated concurrent engineering sessions clearly facilitate making decisions based on facts rather than believe or wishful thinking. This helps putting maturity into the focus of the development process that is the foundation of removing waste due to re-work and overengineering. CONCLUSIONS The studys key outcome can be summarised as follows: The current mission development process, although partially highly optimised, is lacking of a global reflection. Many issues found can be viewed from Lean perspective and can likely be improved by using Lean principles, methods and tools in conjunction with other means such as Concurrent Engineering (CE). CE as a systems engineering approach provides the basis of developing efficient processes and tools for supporting 'right-first time' solutions, and Lean Engineering provides the basis to enhance these processes by eliminating waste and contribute to systems engineering to focus on its core activity: Engineering. Lean therefore capitalises knowledge-based and fact-based decision-making during the entire development process to avoid the worst wastes caused by design-loopbacks late in the project. Understanding the users true needs and their impact and understanding the risks and using design maturity as key indicator for measuring project progress mark the transformation from the traditional project execution paradigm towards a Lean Engineering one. This has the potential for a significant improvement towards working with mature concepts and robust designs, thus, enabling better cost and schedule adherence in the future. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors thank all study participants from Airbus UK, Astrium France and Astrium Germany for their great engagement in sharing their expertise on Lean and performing the investigations on which this paper is based on. Foremost these were John Hobday, Ray Parfitt and Regis Rimbert. Thank you. REFERENCES [1] K. Yazdi, Application of Lean Engineering Principles to Space Mission Development - Final Report", ESA Deliverable Item CDF-LE-FR-01, Astrium Document No. AET1.10.63.ASTR, Astrium GmbH, February 2010.