Concurrent Engineering Facility installed at ASI
Launched on July, 10th 2008, ASI IPC Unit has developed a “Concurrent Engineering Facility” (ASI CEF). It represents the first step towards an improvement and speed-up process of conceptual evaluation and setting of pre feasibility studies and designs (0 / A phases according to ECSS standard terminology). ASI CEF study and data exchange tools will be made available to integrated design teams formed by ASI, research institutes, universities and other space agencies members. Concurrent Engineering methodology applied to space missions is an innovative one and has been first introduced in Europe in 1995. Only major space enterprises, national agencies and ESA have adopted it for the evaluation of their programs.
Concurrent engineering methodology approach is based upon five key elements: • a process; • a multidisciplinary team; • an Integrated Design Model (IDM): a software model tailored to an integrated I/O data exchange among all the technical disciplines involved during a study; • a facility infrastructure; • a software infrastructure. ASI CEF objectives may be summarized as follows: • to perform pre feasibility or advanced design studies encompassing: • analysis of customer application requirements; • mission and compatibility mission analysis; • architectural scenarios definition; • system requirements output; • cost planning and estimates; • to increase inside ASI the coherence of results between technological and application product lines; • to both facilitate the growth of new ASI human resources and improve the skills of the existing ones; • to develop, acquire and use advanced space systems design models and instruments. In order to develop ASI CEF a budget plan has been prepared based on external contracts to Thales Alenia Space Turin for the facility development, to ESTEC for the necessary technical support during the development and training phases, and on the purchase of specific software.
