Case Study: Global Hawk – Analysis

Part 1

Any process of system engineering should be a comprehensive and aimed at problem solving and applicable throughout successively through all the development steps. It should be aimed at transforming the requirements and needs into a system process and product description such that it adds value and further detail as development continues , generate adequate information for decision makers and allow for input for the next stage of development (Defence Acquisition University, 2011). The design process of Global hawk system follows these fundamental requirements at each stage of the development process. It applies the fundamental activities for system engineering which include an analysis of the requirements, allocation after functional analysis, a synthesis of the design and it is also balanced by the necessary tools and techniques (Kinzig & MacAulay, 2010).

The program established a set of performance requirements level in a document for system requirements. It emphasised on the cost of developing the system, which include the Unit Fly away cost, the development fixed price that was integrated with the wider concept of procurement for the total package (Kinzig & MacAulay, 2010). Since the developers lacked any evidence of a strategy for cost control, the process involved treating the cost as the only design requirement while subjecting all performance objectives to trade. The program then followed the strategy of sticking to a single firm requirement, and developed various characteristics for desired performance which it defined in terms of acceptable choice of values. The process allowed the contractor to set the responsibility of identifying among the parameters of required performance and such way, the contractor was to blame for any mistake. The process for the system requirement thus applied a good strategy that ensured that the user requirements are met in accordance to their specification.  For the purpose of balancing the system analysis and control the design of the process, the developer used an integrated process and product development (IPPD) (Kinzig & MacAulay, 2010). This is a technique for management that assimilates all the necessary acquisitions into various multidisciplinary teams that were organised in accordance with areas of the products rather than discipline. In the functional allocation and analysis, the teams for the integrated product are categorised according to the participants who are given the power to commit and make decisions for the functional sections that they are chosen to represent. In this stage of design process, the user and the contractor are given the opportunity to work as a team that has mutual trust, in order to have optimal result in the designing, manufacturing and supportability of the program. The design process ensured that in the development of the program, there was little interference and a high level of autonomy by the concerned contractors. The design also considered the mitigation of the risk of failure by emphasising on a low risk design for the program through equating a program that had high level of technical risk to another program that is not expected to meet the specified cost requirement. In addition the process divided up the development of the process into different phases to ensure that the specifications were fully met at the affordable cost (Kinzig & MacAulay, 2010). Thus the design process meets the fundamental requirements that include the use of integrated product teams who are tasked with a key objective of producing a design solution that will meet the initial specification. The IPTS also communicate the design solution plainly, timely and in an effective manner. The design also puts a lot of emphasis on the development of the product and process and involve all the disciplines that are right for the team (Kinzig & MacAulay, 2010).

Part 2

The SMEP program was fairly utilised in the development of the Global Hawk System since it shows the development team was organised such that there was categorisation of the integrated product teams (IPT) according to the functional areas that they were selected to represent. The process also applies a description of the decision-making and evaluation process while designing and implementation of the entire program. The development process also addresses the technical environments of the whole project and how their management will be carried out as well as discussing the relations between the pre-production conditions and the production conditions (Bracuto & Scheurer, 2008). In the management of the environments that were influenced by the project user – the government – and the contractor where the contractor was allowed as much autonomy as possible and the government was to have little interference of the entire process. The process also utilised both physical and logical design although it did not include how various issues arising in the process will be discussed and then resolved. However, it outlined how the testing procedure of the whole system was carried out. The DARPA resolved to delay the first fight of the Global Hawk, until the completion of a joint evaluation of the entire laws on flight control, software and other critical subsystems for the flight is done by the contractor. The responsibility for testing was given to TRA, where it was supposed to plan on testing, execution of the test and the Test Director designation. The process also outlined the methodology for software development that was used and showed the requirements which mainly focused on cost control measures. This was both for incremental releases and iterative builds (Kinzig & MacAulay, 2010).

Part 3

The conclusions provided for the analysis of the cost is quite reasonable since the analyses considers the duration of the entire process and the steps taken to reduce the impact of the total cost of the program on the Air Force. It also compares the estimates of the costs that were to be used in the development of the entire program and the actual cost that was incurred. The estimation of the cost for Phase III was around $512 million but the actual cost incurred by the government totalled to $963 million (Kinzig & MacAulay, 2010). The difference between the cost estimates and the actual cost incurred can be traced to the various technical issues related to the development of software and the integration of the whole system. Regardless of the direction for the development process to be maintained within the funds that had been availed, there was an increase in the nonrecurring costs of engineering. The reason for the overrun in cost can also be traced to the process of evaluating the alternatives, like having little to no basis of analysing the UFP while instead basing it on the amount the user wanted to pay for it. The other issue was basing the UFP on assumptions that were very optimistic like assumptions on the manufacturing costs and the supplier costs. In addition, the cost overran can be linked to the JPO unwillingness to ensure that the limit of UFP to the tune $10 was observed by the developers of the entire program (Kinzig & MacAulay, 2010). Also , the DAPRA delaying the program lead to a gap and the plan for $ 10 million was completely abandoned , after the strategy to have $10 million for production of 11to 20 vehicles and assumption of buying 3 to 10 Air vehicles was executed quite early thus the whole plan did not work as planned. The contractor was about to achieve the requirement for $10 million if the government maintained the initial plan (Kinzig & MacAulay, 2010). Had various alternatives for awarding the contract been analysed, the analysis indicates that the issue of cost would have been avoided to some extent.

Part 4

The analysis should have given information on other requirements of the whole program the user wanted apart from the limitation on the cost to be incurred. In addition, the analysis should have included more information about organisation structures to include all the concerned stakeholders and give description of the role undertaken by all every stakeholder in the project.  It should have also included the success attained by each technical team in the development of Global Hawk, and that way it is possible to know at which stage of the project cycle the overrun cost was incurred. Further information that should have been provided concern the sequence of the activities at each step in the integration plan and whether some activities involved much higher cost than others in the same stage (Bracuto & Scheurer, 2008). Finally analysis should have covered the issue of risk management in terms of the responsibilities of the participants in identification, assessment and mitigation of the risks.

 

References

Defence Acquisition University, (2011) .Systems engineering fundamentals.147-201. Retrieved from: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/readings/sefguide_01_01.pdf

Bracuto, C. Scheurer, B. (2008). Systems Engineering Plan and Systems Engineering Management Plan Alignment. Retrieved from: http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2008systems/7153bracuto.pdf

Kinzig, B., MacAulay, B., (2010). Global hawk systems engineering case study: Air Force Center for Systems Engineering