October event targets innovation in systems and concurrent engineering
As an R&D organisation, ESA flies space missions that make scientific discoveries or visit distant worlds, and fosters novel technologies to make them happen. But ESA also works to innovate the way its missions are engineered.
Innovation in systems engineering, and particularly in concurrent engineering, will be the focus of an international workshop this October.
The fourth International Workshop on System and Concurrent Engineering for Space Applications (SECESA 2010) will take place in Lausanne, Switzerland on 13–15 October 2010. The event is being organised by ESA’s Directorate of Technical and Quality Management in partnership with the Ecole Polytechnique Federale (EPFL) de Lausanne.
Massimo Bandecchi, Head of ESA’s Systems and Concurrent Engineering, commented: “Following the lead of the previous SECESA 2008 event, which took place at Rome’s La Sapienza University, the workshop is being held at a university, enabling local students to directly participate and get acquainted with the topics concerned at little to no cost.”
The workshop aims to gather together participants from space and non-space institutions, industry and academia interested in the theory, practice and application of system and concurrent engineering (S&CE). It offers them a forum for sharing their experience and discussing innovations and future plans for the field. Success stories and lessons learned from S&CE projects will also be exchanged.
As well as allowing people to learn from each other’s experiences, the intention is also to promote standardisation and collaboration among European space organisations.
The October workshop will consider current industrial practices of S&CE across aerospace and other industries, its application across all stages of a project’s life cycle and new methods and enabling technologies associated with it.
New design approaches for complex systems and system of systems will be examined, as well as lean engineering processes, knowledge management and capitalisation techniques and specific methodologies for smaller nano- and cube-class satellites.
Also under discussion will be the creation, operations and distributions of concurrent design centres on the model of ESA’s Concurrent Design facility (CDF), and how they can be interconnected and harmonised to increase their overall usefulness.
For more information, see the right hand links.
