Cyber Blue Program Review Process

[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.

[Chris Fultz]

Thursday night (29 January), Cyber Blue completed their Critical Design Review with the Technical Advisory Team. This review was a bit more formal than the previous ones and was completed at the Rolls-Royce Training Center. The parent crew provided dinner for the students, reviewer team and other guests.

The agenda included presentations on the team history, previous awards, the PR team and community activity, schedule, Risk, a game description and the Animation team. Following this information, the team presented their 2004 strategy and design to the reviewers.

Every student had a speaking part during the 2-1/2 hour review.

The sub-component teams detailed the design and functionality of their portion with drawings, words, pictures and either actual parts or mock-up pieces.

The review team asked several questions and confirmed in their own minds that the design was acceptable and the risks manageable for Cyber Blue to continue.

There was a considerable discussion on Risk Identification and Mitigation activity. Cyber Blue has initiated a risk management process and provided the review team with some samples of identified risks.

The process Cyber Blue is using is an “IF, THEN” identification. In use, the person defining the risk states that “IF this event happens, THEN this will happen”. Next, a likelihood of the event happening is assigned (High, Medium or Low), then an Impact (H, M, L) if it does occur. The next step is to identify Mitigation actions to reduce either the likelihood of the event happening or the impact if it does happen. The team then puts the risks in a rank order (High, High are at the top, Low / Low at the bottom) to determine what risks need to be worked on – there is usually no way to address every one.

One of the review team members suggested that we also add a column to the matrix to identify the ‘cost’ of implementing the mitigation. The cost might be dollars, time or an increased risk to other robot functions. This suggestion was adopted and added to the risk matrix.

An example of a Risk:

IF there is a pneumatic air leak, THEN our gizmo will not work properly.
Likelihood: Medium.
Impact: High.
Mitigation: Make new, clean cuts on all pneumatic tubing.
Use Teflon tape on all fittings.
Use leak check solution and test the complete system.
Cost: Low cost and minimal time to implement Mitigations.


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