Integrated Product Development Exploiting WebBased Technology to Foster

Integrated Product Development Exploiting Web-Based Technology to Foster IPDT Productivity Phillip J. Brown System Engineering Associates, Inc. PO Box 763220 Dallas, TX 75376 -3220 phil. brown@se. Concepts. com Jack K. Lavender, Jr. Lockheed Martin Vought Systems PO Box 650003 M/S L 14 -01 Dallas, TX 75265 jack. lavender@lmco. com System Engineering Associates, Inc. Managing Complexity with 21 st Century Tools Vought Systems Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 1

Integrated Product Development Presentation Outline • • • Product Development Environment Process Implementation Representative Applications Cost Benefits Why This Works! LOSAT (Line-of-Sight Anti-Tank)

Implementation Environment (Information Technology) Integrated Product Development • Company IT Infrastructure Contemporary computer communications infrastructure is in place. Adapting this utility to Integrated Product Development Team (IPDT) needs required no new funds. • Technologies Essential enabling technology was provided in the summer of 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee (Brody, 1996) with the establishment of open communication standards freeing document exchange from platform dependence Lockheed Martin had a site license for the Netscape Browser. The emergence of database oriented “middleware” products like Alliare’ Cold Fusion ™ provided needed bridge to legacy systems and to small project created databases • Team receptive to ideas for slashing costs. Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 3

Integrated Product Development The Challenge Change culture and spend no money*! (*development and maintenance) Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 4

Process Model Integrated Product Development System Definition System Development System Deployment Formulation Analysis Interpretation Three Engineering Steps within each of the three lifecycle phases - Andrew Sage Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 5

Implementation Schedule Integrated Product Development “Team Participation Drove System Evolution” • Prototype – This was a file based system used to demonstrating how to organize and present product design information. • Alpha – This was the first ‘web served’ version. This static site demonstrated how to distribute data over multiple campuses. • Beta – This was the first dynamic version. It connected us with legacy information systems and provided ‘real-time’ team interaction. Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 6

Integrated Product Development Defining Architectural Requirements • Matrix was developed by LOSAT product development team members. • Team identified every product produced and used by individuals on program. • Final matrix was 59 rows by 13 columns. Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 7

Product Taxonomy (Cornerstone for Solving the Problem) • Revision Tracked Document Integrated Product Development This is a stand-alone document that captures the design or is used to apply process controls. • Latest version only The author keeps up with the change history, but the team members are only interested in the latest version. • Simple Databases This is characterized by Forms used to apply process control. • Legacy Open Database Access existing databases using Cold Fusion and ODBC (Open Data Base Connectivity). • Too Hard This category represents the items that were deemed too difficult to work, for both technical and political reasons. Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 8

Integrated Product Development Building System Functionality • The first application was posting weekly activity reports. • The second was to devise a framework for distributing scheduling and cost reports. • All IPDT schedules, presentations, meeting minutes and action items were distributed via the web. • Pervasiveness of information products demonstrated the need for a solid document vault and set implementation priorities. • A hierarchical structure mirroring our product design and functional organizations was used to distribute the vaulted documents in context. Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 9

Integrated Product Development How We Tested and Verified Solutions • We adhered to a design, code, test, and enhance approach for development. Solutions we chose had to be “good enough” to solve the problem at hand. • Users’ needs drove system utility. The developer was there with the users and feeling the same project driven pressures. • The short deployment timeline enabled users to immediately ascertain if a design met their needs. Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 10

Integrated Product Development The LOSAT Portal This is the starting place to the LOSAT product documentation. It provides a context-centric browsing base on our team culture and the product design. Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 11

Integrated Product Development Cooperative Writing This was the first test of a dynamic web environment It provided a tool for performing a group writing assignment using a checkout/check-in system. It allowed management to monitor the progress and evaluate scope of work in near real-time. Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 12

The Drawing Tree Integrated Product Development A Primary Communication Means for Engineering Development Teams Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 13

Integrated Product Development The “Killer Application” • A cost-benefit study was performed to find and prioritize the best ideas for cutting IPDT operational costs. • While all the proposed ideas produced impressive returns on investment, the task producing the highest pay-off was digitizing the process used by the company to track a product through design, build and test. (Logbooks) • Functional engineering management rejected the initial findings as unrealistic. (June, 1997) • A second effort collected actual logbook preparation costs. Recalculation of the Estimated Return on Investment from digitizing logbooks produced an ROI exceeding 6, 000 percent. Annual savings were four million dollars per year. • Today (June, 1999), a special Product Data Management team is working to implement electronic logbooks across the Division. Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 14

Integrated Product Development Why This Implementation Works! • The architecture is extensible, yet can be developed and maintained by one individual. • The system can be rapidly adapted to solve each day’s problems. • Emphasis is on content. • User needs are always paramount • At its core, the system was a vault built to organize and distribute information. • The functionality of the system sells itself through making each team member’s job easier. Phil Brown - Jack Lavender 15