fast and virtual
Eight experts from three companies network their skills to land a rocket engine in record time.
By Gene Allen
We were at the annual meeting of the National
Center for Manufacturing Sciences in Nashville when MSC.Software got a
call from Bob Carman. The company had collaborated with Carman over the
previous several years on a number of advanced technology programs. He
is the program manager for advanced technology and advanced propulsion
systems at Boeing's Rocketdyne business unit in Canoga Park, Calif.
We didn't know it at the time, but Carman's call involved us in a program
that tested our arguments about the value of collaboration in engineering.
Collaboration is just a fancy word for working together; everyone does
it all the time in almost everything we do. Generally, the better you
can collaborate, the better you can do your job. No one individual or
even company has all the resources needed to conduct and commercialize
R&D. Organizations and people have to work together.
However, as we know, collaboration isn't particularly easy. It requires
good communication and understanding by everyone on a team, and a common
goal that is significant enough to generate trust among all the partners.
MSC had a history of collaborating with Carman over the years to develop
and commercialize new technologies.
On this particular call, Carman had a tall order. He wanted the best engineering
analyst MSC had available, and he needed the help immediately. Carman
was in the last nine months of a task that was a key part of a cost share
contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop
and demonstrate a distributed, collaborative design environment.
He wanted to deliver on the DARPA contract and had a profound application
to demonstrate. Ray Amador, MSC's director of engineering services, immediately
joined the telephone conversation. (Conference calls are a quick and easy
means of facilitating collaboration.)
Carman relayed an ambitious plan to revolutionize the rocket engine business
through his DARPA project. He wanted to drive down the cost of a rocket
engine by 100 times, to be able to get an engine to market 10 times faster
than had been possible with the Space Shuttle's main engine, and to increase
the useful life of a rocket engine by a factor of three.
Carman had set these goals based on the business case Rocketdyne was encountering
in the post-Cold War commercial rocket engine business—which was
being flooded by warehoused engines from Russia.
Far-Fetched Goals?
While Carman was recognized as a grand visionary, these goals seemed particularly
far-fetched. They were viewed as impossible by most of his fellow rocket
scientists at Rocketdyne.
Carman's novel approach to realizing these goals was to identify the best
experts available to perform particular functions and have them work on
the problem. But the best experts didn't all work at Boeing; they had
other full-time jobs and could be located anywhere. To address this situation,
Carman realized that he did not need these experts full-time, but could
get results if they worked just a fraction of the time they had available.
He also recognized that the geography problem could be addressed by getting
the experts to work together over the Internet.
As Carman relayed this scenario to Ray Amador, we decided to participate
in the effort. Amador agreed to provide an expert from his staff. So started
Dave Bremmer's odyssey with the combustion devices portion of the Simple
Low-Cost Innovative Concepts Engine program.
Bremmer was the SLICE structural and stress analyst, one of eight experts
on the virtual team working for Carman. He didn't know any of the other
team members. He didn't have any previous experience designing rocket
engines (as was the case with the co-lead designer and other experts from
Texas Instruments). Bremmer could work on this effort only part timeÐno
more than four hours per week. He had paying customer obligations that
he had to meet, while Boeing was only able to cover costs in this project.
The seemingly impossible challenge was to develop a product, in a matter
of months, to the point that previously required 200 people an average
of two years. However, Bremmer is an exceptional engineer with degrees
from Cal Tech and many years of experience as an analyst and a developer
of advanced analysis software. Excitement was also a factor: How many
times does someone get to design a real rocket engine from scratch?
Guided by past experience, Carman had assembled the ingredients and tools
needed to give his project a chance of success. The ingredients needed
to make collaboration work include a common objective that benefits all
participants, defined roles, understanding of the systems and processes,
and involvement of an organization that must respond to the market. Rocketdyne
had identified eight key functions or competencies needed to successfully
develop a new rocket engine, hence a core team with eight experts, each
of whom was recognized as the best at a respective competency.
The team members, besides Bremmer and Carman, were from Rocketdyne and
Texas Instruments. From Rocketdyne were Hal Buddenbohm, technical team
leader; Dave Matthews, lead designer for layout and functionality; Scott
Claflin, responsible for advanced combustion devices concepts; Le Keng
Tseng, the combustion analyst, and Terry Kim, the aerothermal analyst.
From TI in Dallas were Bob Corley, co-lead designer for geometry and CAD,
and Dennis Costin, who handled issues of manufacturing and product cost.
There were also 16 additional support people from Rocketdyne, Texas Instruments,
Lockheed Martin, and Howmet Castings.
Carman also had identified the contracting environment and Internet tool
he needed to make the program work. He had only nine months for the project
and needed to start work as soon as there was a spoken agreement to do
so. The contract negotiations took place in parallel with the work. The
final contract was actually signed after the work was done, which enabled
a detailed statement of work to be prepared. The previous relationships
among the companies provided confidence that intellectual property, company
proprietary information, liability, and compensation were being addressed
fairly.
Getting the Process Started
Bremmer met five of the eight team members at the project kickoff meeting
later that month. It was the only co-located meeting held until the end
of the project. The objectives of the meeting were to clearly understand
the technical objectives and benefits of the project to the participating
companies, and to provide training on the Internet tool they would use
for information exchange in the program. It also gave team members a chance
to get to know one another. They spent time together socially during the
day and that evening. As result, they established the respect and trust
needed for successful information and knowledge exchange.
The Multimedia Environment for Collaborative Engineering was the tool
used to support the SLICE program. It had recently been developed under
the same DARPA program and was being supported by the company CommerceNet
(now NexPrise). It consisted of an Internet notebook and a Document Vault
that could be securely accessed from anywhere. It included an electronic
white board that allowed near-instantaneous access to the same entry by
all the participants.
Meetings were scheduled in which the teams would do their work from their
company sites. All the necessary information was shared and available
24 hours per day, seven days per week. Technical, business, and financial
information was shared on a continuous basis across the team. Management
was based on following what was going on, and providing appropriate leadership
when necessary. There were no traditional management or reporting rules
when each person worked only two to four hours per week on the program.
The key was to maximize the productivity of the team, by enabling each
member to work the problems as they had time. Bremmer observed that strong
self-motivation was a key attribute to get results when working in this
type of environment. Entrepreneurialism was a characteristic of all the
key participants.
When an issue came up, the team, or a subteam, would identify a time when
they could discuss it over the phone while all accessed the Internet notebook
and whiteboard. Information and knowledge were continually shared and
developed in this environment. Participants would work off-line as appropriate
and update information in the notebook. Important entries were entered
into the Document Vault, which served as an archive for CAD files and
other data; they could be downloaded for reference. The whiteboard would
contain design models that could be manipulated by anyone participating
in the joint session.
Analysts could iterate design tradeoffs in real time, so everyone on the
team could understand the reasons for changes being made and provide feedback
based upon their expertise. Because of the little activity time available
per work session, work time and meeting time merged into one, redefining
the concept of a meeting.
In one session, Dave Bremmer found a stress problem in the boundary wall
between two fluids in the engine. He recommended increasing the wall thickness
to remove the stress. The team agreed to his recommended change as soon
as he made it. The wall thickness was immediately changed with the weight,
cost, and computer-aided drawing models altered instantaneously.
Questions Are Welcome
As the project progressed, everyone was encouraged to provide concepts
and to question direction. When anyone had a problem, the team stopped
and fixed the problem. This prevented rework, and ensured effective communications.
A number of different approaches to a variety of issues were proposed.
Progress was considered to have been made only when it was acceptable
to everyone on the team.
Those on the team with no previous rocket engine design experience brought
particularly valuable perspectives to the work. They asked questions about
the design of legacy rocket engine components. This gave rise to rethinking
old solutions.
Often language obstacles were overcome by reverting to washing machine
or automotive analogies that everyone could instantly relate to. The significant
result was a reduction in parts included in the engine assembly. This
reduction in parts and complexity, in turn, resulted in unprecedented
quality levels.
After eight months, the question remained as to whether the team would
be able to generate any engine design, much less one that met the requirements.
Traditional project management practices would have led to termination
much earlier. Everything came together in the ninth month, and after 89
virtual meetings and 651 entries in the Document Vault, the team had a
design. The team worked for months on the project, with no member devoting
more than 15 percent of his or her time. All members of the SLICE team
met for the first time at the team meeting held on the last day of the
project at the final technical review and celebration.
The SLICE team exceeded expectations by creating one of only two liquid-fueled
rocket engines to be developed in the United States in more than 25 years.
The team successfully designed a thrust chamber for a rocket engine made
of six parts instead of the normal 1,200 or so (a 200-fold decrease in
part count). This resulted in achieving a predicted quality level of 9
sigma, meaning less than 1 failure out of 10 billion, instead of the current
industry best practice of 6 sigma, and more conventional experience of
2 to 4 sigma for rocket engine combustion devices. Engine manufacturing
cost was reduced from $7 million to $0.5 million (a 14-fold decrease).
The first unit production cost was reduced from $4.5 million to $47,000.
In addition, the rocket engine was designed within nine months to the
point where the company had generated a mock-up. With previous engines,
the expectation would have been closer to two years to get an engine design
that far along. The team was able to achieve all of this with its members
working part-time, within budget.
Access to the resulting SLICE design is restricted (which is why there
are no pictures of the rocket engine with this article).
The SLICE project was a highlight of Dave Bremmer's career, as it was
for all those who participated in the program. The project proved the
viability of the emerging capability to collaborate over the Internet
and expand product innovation.
Gene Allen is director of collaborative development
for MSC.Software in Los Angeles.