Implementing Risk Management as part of a Systems Engineering Process

During the last five years, Oerlikon Aerospace developed and implemented engineering processes. In this paper, we discuss the application of risk management to the re-engineering of operator console stations of a missile weapon system. We briefly describe the systems engineering process. Finally, twelve lessons learned are discussed. PROCESS DEVELOPMENT BACKGROUND Oerlikon Aerospace (OA) is the integrator of an air defense missile system. The system consists of a missile launcher mounted on a tracked vehicle or a fixed platform, together with radar and optical sensors, electronic control systems and communication equipment. Over 120 systems and software engineers are involved in the development and maintenance of the system. The organization has been ISO 9001 certified since 1993. In 1997, the organization has also been assessed as CMM ({Paulk 93) level 2 by independent assessors certified by the Software Engineering Institute. In addition to satisfying level 2 goals, the organization also met 8 of the 17 level 3 goals. In 1995, it was decided that a forma l systems engineering process had to be developed and implemented in order to seamlessly integrate disciplines associated with systems engineering. The development effort was initiated by the performance of an internal assessment of our systems engineering practices. A decision was made to use, as frameworks, the Systems Engineering Capability Maturity Model (SECMM) and the Generic Systems Engineering Process (GSEP) developed by the Software Productivity Consortium (SPC 1995). A systems engineering process (Laporte 1997) describes management and technical activities, roles and responsibilities, metrics and artifacts produced by each activity. The management activities of the Systems Engineering Process (SEP) major steps are summarized in table 1 while table 2 illustrates the technical activities (steps 210 through 270). The process had been applied to the re-engineering of two sub-systems: the launcher control electronics and the radar and electro-optical operator consoles (Laporte 1998). The launcher control subsystem is composed of a main data processor which coordinates the operation of the sensors and the launch and guidance of the missiles, a missile tracker processor, a target tracker processor, and a servo control processor. The operator consoles consist in a radar console to control the radar and communication subsystems, and an electro -optical console to control optical sensors and missile launcher. THE RE-ENGINEERING OF OPERATOR