A lean safety review process for payloads on the International Space Station

The International Space Station has the potential to serve as a unique test platform to enable technologies for a wide array of manned and unmanned NASA missions. In order to live up to its promise, the resources required to develop and fly an experiment on the Station must be commensurate with the scientific return that will be obtained. This thesis applies the set of tools and principles known collectively as Lean Engineering to the Payload Safety Review process, one of the activities that must be satisfied by payloads prior to flying. The goal of this study is to attempt to reduce the required resources needed to fly a payload on the Station. Using the MIT Lean Aerospace Initiative Transformation to Lean roadmap, three separate payload examples of increasing degree of complexity are analyzed. Value streams are derived, and estimates for duration and labor requirements are presented based on past experience and data obtained from various stakeholders. Opportunities for waste (muda) reduction are identified. In addition, a comparative analysis is presented where the Safety Review Process is contrasted to similar issues faced by industry over the last several decades as manufacturing processes were transformed in order to increase quality while simultaneously reducing cost. Insights from these analyses, supported by stakeholder data from payload developers and the NASA Payload Safety Review Panel, are used to suggest a redesign to improve the Safety Review process. Three specific recommendations are proposed: 1) Establishment of a group outside NASA that can provide experienced, design assistance to payload developers as an integral part of their design teams; 2) Empowerment of these integrated teams through elimination of the

Department dc:contributor.department

System Design and Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Luis, Javier de

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jeffrey A. Hoffman.

• System Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29537

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29537