Wojtek MozdyniewiczF-35 Structural DesignLockheed Martin May-2007

CHALLENGES OF THEBETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER PHILOSOPHY OF AERONAUTICAL DESIGN

•The dominant emphasis during the Cold War (1950 – 1985) was on the Performance of systems rather than on time or cost to develop and sustain the systems.

•By the 1990s, metrics related to cost and schedule of aerospace systems were troubling. With an industry facing reduced government investment and global competition in both commercial and military markets.

• The need for improvement was evident to all enterprise leaders. The call was for systems to be developed Better, Faster, Cheaper from beginning.

Need for Improvement

Examples of Planes under Philosophy of Performance

Driven Development

F-111 Video B-52 Video

SU-35 VideoF16 vs SU27

F-4 Video

F-16 Video

B2

. . . . . . .

Speed of sound created barrier of PERFORMANCE DRIVEN DESIGN.

F-14 TOMCAT left

F-18 HORNET below

RAF TORNADO

A380 Landing

F35 I-st flight F35 IInd I-st flight

Mirage 2000 3.27 A380 Cross Wind Land

B2 Marvels F-4 Video

Examples of Planes under

Philosophy of Better, Faster, Cheaper,

A380 BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER

3D VIEW

Trends in cost and development time

• Plot which were first introduced in the late 1960s ofthe unit cost of US tactical aircraft versus yearsshowed an extrapolated crossing of the cost of asingle aircraft with the total DoD budget in themiddle of the 21st century.

•Although there has been considerable attention given to reducingthe cost of new tactical aircraft, it has provendifficult to realize.

•The best curve fit indicates cost increases with the fourth power of thedevelopment time.

Full Text

Full Text

Value•“value” provides a useful framework forengineering in the Better, Faster, Cheaper(BFC) era.

•Value has a growing awareness of the literature and concepts, including the field of Value Engineering thatwas an outgrowth of WWII propulsion engineers.

Value is a measure of worth of aspecific product or service by acustomer, and is a function of

(1) the product’s usefulness in satisfying acustomer need

(2) the relative importance of the need being satisfied,

(3) the availability of the product

• Value Definitions

•functional relationships need to be defined bythe customer for each product or system.

•These relationships would comprise specific metricswith weightings to indicate customer utilityfunctions and normalizations for consistency.

•Performance function, fp · Vehicle performance (range-payload, speed,maneuver parameters)

· Combat performance (lethality, survivability, store capability)

· Quality, reliability, maintainability, upgradability

· System compatibility (ATC, airport infrastructure, mission anagement)

· Environmental (Noise, emissions, total environmental impact)

Full Text

Risk

•Risk management, another area of fruitful research inthe Better, Faster, Cheaper era.

•In the early years of the Cold War, customers were willing to take considerable risk as national securitywas seriously threatened.

• By the mid 60s, the tolerance for risk started to diminish due to public accountability both for fiscal reasons and the consumer rights movements.

•Now society is very risk-averse for fields like aeronautics. In a modern aeronautical program, a single significant failure can doom the entire program,particularly if it is not managed well.

Lean

•Program (IMVP) identified a new industrialparadigm they called “Lean”, emerging from theJapanese automobile producers.•in particular, Toyota’s Lean production is replacing mass production.

• throughout many industries including aerospace - an industry that has been characterized prior to 1990 as a craft production system with a mass production mentality is turning to Lean.

• Lean is focussed on two meta principles: (1) wasteminimization and (2) responsiveness to change.

•Or stated in other words, focusing on addingvalue and flexibility.

• Lean is responsible in large part for the recovery of the US automotive industry from the desperate situation of the1970s.

For Example;

Lean findings and implementation

Impressive progress has been made indevelopment and manufacturing of aerospacesystems with the application of lean over thelast decade. A list of examples contributed byLAI members in late 1998 [16] is given in theappendix. A few specific examples are includedto illustrate findings and application at subsystem levels. A big challenge is to optimize themix of sub process improvements to achievesystem level, or bottom line, improvements. Aparticularly stellar example in this regard is theC-17 program that has taken $100M of cost outof each aircraft, partly due to implementation oflean practices.Figure 7 shows the cumulative results ofapplying a number of lean practices to designand production of a forward fuselage section.Compared to an earlier product, the applicationof lean led to an effective learning curve shift of9 units and a 48% reduction in labor hours oncelearning was stabilized.

2.1 Trends in cost and development timePerhaps the first person to call national attentionto the fateful trend of increasing costs foraircraft was Norm Augustine [1]. His plot(which he first introduced in the late 1960s) ofthe unit cost of US tactical aircraft versus yearsshowed an extrapolated crossing of the cost of asingle aircraft with the total DoD budget in themiddle of the 21st century. Although there hasbeen considerable attention given to reducingthe cost of new tactical aircraft, it has provendifficult to realize. “Augustine’s Crossing”remains a major concern.McNutt reported in 1999 [2] that the timerequired to develop all major DoD systems,including aircraft, increased by 80% in the thirtyyears from 1965 to 1994 as shown in Figure 1.

McNutt also reported a correlation between thecost and the time of development for suchsystems. Although there is considerable scatterin the data, the best curve fit indicates costincreases with the fourth power of thedevelopment time. Clearly development time isa major variable to consider.One might argue that the root cause for thesetime increases is growing system complexity.However, development time for commercialsystems of comparable complexity has beenreduced during this same period. For example,the Boeing 777 was developed and fielded from1990-1995. Beyond complexity, other likelycauses include a wide variety of inefficiencies inacquisition, design, engineering andmanufacturing practices and processes fordevelopment cost and timeof embedded software in aerospace systems.aeronautical systems.

An indicator of the evolving industry dynamicsis the number of major US aerospace companiesas shown in Figure 4, which includes allaerospace products, not just aircraft. From 1908to about 1959, with the exception of thedepression years, more companies entered thefield than exited. From 1959 to the present thetrends are the opposite. There was a steepdecline from 1960 to 1969, followed by a longplateau from 1969 to 1992. The post Cold-Warmergers and acquisitions left a vastly differentindustrial base at the end of the decade. Similardynamics have influenced the Europeanindustries, but with time shifted effects. Thefirst wave of consolidation at the national levelstarted earlier, and the current period ofinternational consolidations lagged due to themore complex political considerations.The shape of the Figure 4 curve follows aclassic pattern of product evolution exhibited bymany industries producing assembled products,as studied and reported by Utterback [6].

3 Value“Value” is a word that is common in thebusiness literature and vernacular, and even insome quarters of engineering. It is certainlycommon to each of us individually. Over thepast few years, LAI research has found that“value” provides a useful framework forengineering in the Better, Faster, Cheaper(BFC) era. In fact, it will be shown that BFCcan be recast as a value metric. The authors arenot experts in value, but have a growingawareness of the literature and concepts,including the field of Value Engineering thatwas an outgrowth of WWII propulsionengineers.Value is a measure of worth of aspecific product or service by acustomer, and is a function of (1) theproduct’s usefulness in satisfying acustomer need, (2) the relativeimportance of the need being satisfied,(3) the availability of the product

“A system offering best life-cycle valueis defined as a system introduced at theright time and right price which deliversbest value in mission effectiveness,performance, affordability andsustainability, and retains theseadvantages throughout its life.”The emphasis of this extended definition is toconsider the total lifecycle, which is central toaerospace systems that have long lifetimes andconsiderable lifecycle operational costs.Research is currently underway to develop aframework for BLV. Best Lifecycle Value canelevate the thinking of aeronautical engineersbeyond “Higher, Faster, Farther” or “Better,Faster, Cheaper” to an abstraction that embracesboth and provides a framework for futurechallenges.

3.2 Elements of ValueFrom the above discussion, it is apparent thatvalue is a multidimensional attribute, and thedefinition in the aeronautical context is stillemerging. One might assume a functionalrelationship as:Value = fp ( performance) / fc(cost) · ft(time)

Improved performance (Better), lower cost(Cheaper), and shorter times (Faster).

This definition of value is a variant on the one used by Value Engineers who don’t include the time function. Thefunctional relationships need to be defined bythe customer for each product or system. Theserelationships would comprise specific metricswith weightings to indicate customer utilityfunctions and normalizations for consistency.Some examples of elements that might be inthese value metrics are given for illustration.These are not exhaustive, but illustrate the largenumber of possible factors that might enter a value analysis.

Performance function, fp · Vehicle performance (range-payload, speed,maneuver parameters)

· Combat performance (lethality, survivability, store capability)

· Ilities (Quality, reliability, maintainability, upgradability)

· System compatibility (ATC, airport infrastructure, mission anagement)

· Environmental (Noise, emissions, total environmental impact)

References:[1] Augustine, N. Augustine’s Laws.6th edition.American Institute of Aeronautics andAstronautics, Reston, VA, 1997[2] McNutt, R. “Reducing DoD Product DevelopmentTime: The Role of the Schedule DevelopmentProcess”. MIT Ph.D. Thesis, Jan 1999.[3] Menendez, J. "The Software Factory: IntegratingCASE Technologies to Improve Productivity." LAIReport 96-02, Jul 1996.[4] Hernandez, C. "Intellectual CapitalWhite Paper." The California EngineeringFoundation, Dec 7, 1999.[5] Drezner, J., Smith, G., Horgan, L., Rogers, C. andSchmidt, R. "Maintaining Future Military AircraftDesign Capability." RAND Report R-4199F, 1992[6] Utterback, J. Mastering the Dynamics ofInnovation. Harvard Business School Press,Boston, MA, 1996.[7] Chase, J., Darot, J., Evans, A., Fernandes, P.,Markish, J., Nuffort, M., Speller, T., “TheBusiness Case for the Very Large Aircraft”, AIAAPapar 2001-0589, Reno, NV, Jan 2001

[8] Liebeck, R.H., Page, M.A., Rawdon, B.K.,“Blended-Wing-Body Subsonic CommercialTransport”, AIAA-98-0438,[9] Slack, R. "The Application of Lean Principles tothe Military Aerospace Product DevelopmentProcess." MIT SM Thesis, Dec 1998.[10] Fredriksson, B. "Holistic system engineering inproduct development", The SAAB-SCANIAGRIFFIN. Nov 1994, pp. 23-31.[11] Fabrycky, W. Life Cycle Costs and Economics.Prentice Hall, N.J. 1991.[12] Warmkessel, J. "Learning to Think Lean."INCOSE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference, April5, 2000.[13] Womack, J, Jones, D and Roos, D. The MachineThat Changed The World. Rawson, 1990.[14] Womack, J and Jones, D. Lean Thinking. Simon &Schuster, 1996.

[15] Weiss, S, Murman, E and Roos. D. "The Air Forceand Industry Think Lean." Aerospace America,May 1996, pp32-38.[16] "Benefits of Implementing Lean Practices and theImpact of the Lean Aerospace Initiative in theDefense Aerospace Industry and GovernmentAgencies." LAI Whitepaper, January 1999.http://lean.mit.edu/public/pubnews/pubnews.html[17] Ippolito, B and Murman, E. "Improving theSoftware Upgrade Value Stream." LAIMonograph, expected publication July 2000.[18] Hoppes, J. "Lean Manufacturing Practices in theDefense Aircraft Industry." MIT SM Thesis, May1995