NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
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This study by the National Materials Advisory Board was conducted under Contract No. MDA903-89-K-0078 with the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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ABSTRACT
This report addresses the application of unified life-cycle engineering approaches to the design, manufacture and application of structural components, especially structural components for advanced military weapons systems. Unified life-cycle engineering (ULCE), or concurrent engineering, is a design engineering environment in which computer-aided design technology is used to assess and improve the quality of a product not only during the active design phases but throughout its entire life cycle by integrating and optimizing design attributes for producibility and supportability as well as for performance, operability, cost, and schedule. The study identifies and evaluates priorities for research and development in life-cycle engineering with the goal of identifying the enabling technologies that underpin ULCE, their readiness for application, and the research and development required to make them commercially available in a 10-year period. The committee examined the current and desired future environments for five factors in a product's life cycle: design, manufacture, product support, materials, and information systems. Four critical issues are identified and conclusions and recommendations to support the development of an effective ULCE design engineering environment are defined.
COMMITTEE ON ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES FOR UNIFIED LIFE-CYCLE ENGINEERING OF STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS
Chairman
Michael J. Buckley,
Rockwell International Science Center, Palo Alto Laboratory, California
Members
J. Kenneth Blundell,
University of Missouri-Columbia
Ronald C. Fix,
McAir CAD/CAM, St. Louis, Missouri
Siegfried Goldstein,
Siegfried Enterprises, Inc., North Babylon, New York
Charles F. Herndon,
General Dynamics Corporation, Fort Worth, Texas
Richard Lopatka,
Pratt & Whitney Manufacturing Division, East Hartford, Connecticut
Yoh-Han Pao,
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
Ralph E. Patsfall,
General Electric Company, Cincinnati, Ohio
Robin Stevenson,
General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan
Edison T. S. Tse,
Stanford University, Stanford, California
Dick Wilkins,
University of Delaware, Newark
David H. Withers,
IBM Industrial Sector Division, Atlanta, Georgia
H. Thomas Yolken,
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland
Liaison Representatives
Walter H. Reimann,
WRCD/ML, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
Melvin C. Ohmer,
WRDC/ML, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
Dan E. Good, Aviation Applied Technology Directorate,
Ft. Eustis, Virginia
John Mayer,
National Science Foundation, Washington, DC
Charles A. Zanis,
Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, DC
Lewis Sloter,
Naval Air Systems Command, Washington, DC
Richard Weinstein,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC
NMAB Staff
Klaus M. Zwilsky, Director
Stanley M. Wolf, Project Officer (1987–1988)
Cathryn Summers, Senior Secretary
PREFACE
The development of complex military weapons systems has always required that the design team make numerous decisions regarding the use of advanced, unproved technology to achieve improved performance and enhanced cost-effectiveness. The continuing need for better performance has generally led to the technological approach that offers the highest performance consistent with program cost and schedule constraints. Systems are often developed that require considerable modification before they can be efficiently manufactured and considerable support in the field once they are deployed.
Unified life-cycle engineering (ULCE) is a concept aimed at providing designers with integrated knowledge and information needed throughout a weapon system's life cycle--from design through product support. This enlarged information set could significantly upgrade weapons systems design and performance as well as shorten development and prototype demonstration times. ULCE has the goal of providing the designer or engineer with information and tools that will permit the consideration of more issues and perform more trade-off studies within the time constraints. Just as the widespread use of word processing programs (a tool) at individual workstations has increased the quality of letters and reports by making it far easier to edit and format documents, so in principle will ULCE design stations improve the quality of design by making it far easier to consider explicitly issues that previously were addressed only with great difficulty, if at all.
The Department of Defense and National Aeronautics and Space Administration requested the National Research Council, through the National Materials Advisory Board, to examine ULCE for structural components. The study was charged with identifying and evaluating priorities in R&D opportunities in the area of ULCE of structural components and with assessing the enabling technologies for ULCE (including the needs and relationships among several technologies--materials, structural design, component manufacture, product support, and information systems).
This report documents the findings of the study. It emphasizes technical issues associated with ULCE and institutional issues are also considered. Its intended audiences are government and industry executives who set policy for their organizations as well as program managers in funding agencies responsible for identifying and responding to opportunities for improved system reliability.