[Chris Fultz]

Last night was the Preliminary Design Review.
Cyber Blue had five reviewers - 3 common to the Concept Review and one
new reviewer from each of two other sponsors.

The presentations were made by several of the team members.

Overall the reviewers were positive about the progress made in the past week and how many of their ideas and comments had been considered.

We spend a great deal of time discussing the schedule and risk assessment and mitigation activities. Their comments would apply to any team, so I will share them here.

1. Quickly identify the longest lead* components. Make a priority list based on lead time. Assign drafting jobs based on the longest elad items. Make sure someone is defining the specs and placing orders for purchased parts.

2. Determine if some long lead manufactured parts can be 'risk released'. This would mean releasing the print to the manufacturing team before it is completely finished. This would allow the manufacturing team to begin working on the part up to a specific point while the design work continues.

3. Determine a method of easy priority for manufacturing work. Color coded drawings or a numbering system would make it easy for the machining team to know what part should be worked on next. It is probably not a first in - first out priority.

4. Write basic routings for manufactured parts and have the machinist mark progress. That way, if someone is absent the next work period someone else can easily see what needs to be done and finish the work.

5. Identify critical dimensions and locations so that the machinist knows where accuracy is absolutely required and where there is some margin room.

Next week is the Critical Design Review. We should have completed drawings and a full risk assessment and several parts / sub-assemblies completed.

* Lead time is the time to either design and manufacture the part or the time to spec and purchase and take delivery of the part.










100.