Sprint to the finish

Current aerospace and defense (A&D) development cycles tend to be formal and drawn out, with design requirements and technologies evolving during the process, resulting in a high volume of unexpected changes throughout a program’s life. Increasing product complexity, technological evolution, and changing requirements increase program development time, risk, and cost. Today’s product development now requires addressing a multitude of factors and challenges simultaneously. (Figure 1)

Driving change

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is implementing a new product development and acquisition paradigm with a goal to drive faster design, create seamless assembly, and achieve easier upgrades to reduce overall program lifecycle cost.

This new approach requires flexible, agile product development, breaking processes into smaller, more manageable, and easily achievable blocks of effort called sprints.

Companies must create environments that use digital information for efficient, productive, and collaborative development processes spanning the entire value network, enabling A&D companies to better collaborate with their supply chain and design partners.

Agile development processes

This is about doing the right thing, which often means not doing things completely right. An agile process continually assesses the project throughout product development, and is most effective where complex problems are to be solved, solutions are initially unknown, product requirements are likely to change, and the work can be modularized.

The traditional legacy approach, often called the fixed waterfall program plan, is linear (left side of Figure 2). In contrast, agile development (right side of Figure 2) is iterative and more flexible. Some core values of agile development include:

• Individuals and interactions prioritized over processes and tools
• Working solutions prioritized over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration prioritized over contract negotiation
• Responding to change prioritized over following a plan

An agile program is more responsive to change in all stages of development and designed to reduce cost across the entire development life cycle.

The importance of sprints

Within agile development, product development team members work in iterations called sprints or scrums. An agile process includes daily meetings, a clear definition of work done, and incorporates frequent releases. Requirements are allocated and bundled into user stories prioritized and selected as the scope for each sprint. During the sprint, a product solution element is designed, analyzed, optimized, and validated (Figure 3). At the end of each sprint, the team delivers a product increment ready for deployment or use in following sprints. This process continues throughout the development life cycle until all the product’s defined capabilities are ready for release.

Agile allows product development in parallel with new insights, ongoing changes to requirements, and acquisition of other impactful information. The shortened development cycle allows the product to be more attuned to a shifting market, ensuring it’s still relevant when launched.

Dealing with the unpredictable; Digital twin, digital thread

Handling new requirements or late changes is difficult, costly, and often only partially successful. Unpredictable changes often result in scrapping previous work and starting over, or pushing through with the product development while hoping the product at launch will still fit current needs.

In an agile development environment, teams can respond quickly when unpredictable scenarios arise and adapt.

A key part of a digital transformation is implementing a comprehensive digital twin and digital thread that spans the company, enabling collaboration and information sharing throughout the development process across all domains. The digital thread enables teams to gain access to information needed for their individual sprints. Everyone in the development process has broader access to information so they’re more aware of their interdependence with other disciplines.

The digital thread enables a company to define and maintain a comprehensive digital twin representing the product or system, its production environment and processes, and its use and performance in operation. Using the digital twin, complemented with simulation technologies, allows teams to quickly identify and evaluate options, shortening decisions and sprint development time, and teams can evaluate more designs earlier in the life cycle. Using the digital twin during service enables pro-active, predictive maintenance, providing direct feedback to design and engineer teams for product fixes and upgrades.

With the digital twin and digital thread in place, new technologies to further enhance the agile development processes can be added, including:

• Simulation-driven, generative-design solutions incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) integrated with advanced solutions defining composites and materials, enabling new additive and hybrid manufacturing techniques
• Integration of mechanical CAD, electrical/electronic CAD, and software development tools and processes for more comprehensive systems engineering development
• Simulation tools to design a virtual integrated vehicle before building costly physical prototypes, improving and accelerating verification and validation, reducing cost and risk of test programs

Success in agile development

Boeing’s T-X program is a United States Air Force (USAF) development and acquisition program for a two-seat jet trainer to replace the Northrop T-38 Talon. Boeing used new design and manufacturing technologies to win the contract with its entry, now designated the T-7A Red Hawk. The company used modern, computer-driven design and manufacturing to dramatically shorten the development cycle. The Boeing team also saved time and money by using 3D modeling and precision manufacturing, reducing labor costs and accelerating development.

Using agile product development and new technologies, T-7A program benefits include:

• 50% less program cost than the USAF expected
• Model-based engineering increased first-pass quality by 75%
• Agile development reduced software hours by 50%
• Advanced manufacturing reduced assembly hours by 80%

The bottom line

A&D products are complex, have long service lives, and must function in a wide range of harsh and demanding environments. Driven by today’s development challenges and the DOD initiative, A&D companies are moving to modern, agile approaches offering greater flexibility and more responsiveness as mission scope and market demands change.

By leveraging comprehensive digital twin and digital thread, a company can transform how it operates, collaborates, and shares information across the product development process.

Once an agile development process is in place, backed by a digitalized enterprise, development teams can work in smaller, more parallel phases. Complex problems, approaches with no clear solution, and changing product requirements can be embraced and successfully engineered. Teams can work together with greater flexibility and be more responsive as market demands change.

CIMdata Inc.

About the author: Kenneth Amann is executive consultant for CIMdata Inc. He can be reached at k.amann@cimdata.com.