13 Reasons a Cost Estimate Could Go Wrong During a Concurrent Engineering Study (and How to Avoid Them)

Kurzfassung

During early phase spacecraft design, the concurrent engineering (CE) approach is proven to be very efficient. But the compressed and iterative nature of CE sessions can make life difficult for a cost estimator due to immature data, many design changes, and an intense workflow, among other issues. Thiswork discusses 13 problem areas that have been encountered or observed mainly during one-week-long, interdisciplinary space system design studies at the German Aerospace Center. It provides practical examples on how to tackle them, e.g. how to deal with rapid data changes, false expectations and a heterogeneous engineering team.