OVERVIEW OF THE NEW CONCURRENT ENGINEERING FACILITY AT DLR

Abstract

In October 2008, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) inaugurated a new Concurrent Engineering Facility (CEF) in Bremen which is used mainly for design studies at the new DLR Institute of Space Systems. The CEF consists of a main conferencing room for twelve disciplines and up to seven experts or guests, and two smaller rooms for splinter meetings. So far, several one week studies have been carried out, two were dedicated to the DLR compact satellite program. As it is planned to use the CEF not only for phase 0/A studies but also during later phases of the system development cycle, the Concurrent Engineering (CE) process as well as the technical infrastructure have to meet additional requirements, related to dynamic simulations and remote collaboration. Software projects have been initiated at DLR with the objective to create a next-generation CEF infrastructure that will meet those requirements. This paper gives an overview of the facility infrastructure and the ongoing CEF-related software projects at DLR. The AsteroidFinder project served as a first test case for the CE process. Details of first CE sessions carried out for this project and lessons learned are presented. Finally, an outlook on planned future enhancements is given.