I. Program Overview Organization Name/Program Name: Program Leader: Customer: Program Category: Program Background: What is this program all about? Describe: The overarching need for this program History of the program The product that is created by this program Scope of work original & updated Expected deliverables Current status of the program Rockwell Collins Embraer Legacy 450/500 Program Joel Conrad Principal Program Manager jaconrad@rockwellcollins.com, 319-295-8832 Embraer Ricardo Maltez / Legacy 450/500 Program Manager maltez@embraer.com System level R&D/SDD program or project Although Rockwell Collins has a history of working with Embraer in Brazil, Rockwell Collins has not been involved with any significant new development programs at Embraer for some time. Therefore, it was with great excitement and energy that we pursued the Legacy 450 and 500 business jets in 2007. Capturing jets at this successful OEM in the heart of our Business and Regional Systems market was strategically important to Rockwell Collins and the Commercial Systems Business Unit. This story starts after the win in February 2008. Application of the Pro Line Fusion Avionics System to the new Embraer business jets is the program being discussed. Embraer Legacy 450/500 Program Description Rockwell Collins is delivering the avionics system for the Embraer clean-sheet Legacy 450 and Legacy 500 business jets. The Pro Line Fusion Avionics System is a highly integrated system that extends situational awareness to new levels, provides an empowering user interface, offers scalability and flexibility, and provides advanced information management capabilities. The system provides all the traditional avionics functionality through multiple integrated sub-systems and provides interfaces to other airplane systems to enable flight and maintenance crews visibility to the state of these systems. The avionics system includes hardware and software components designed and built by both Rockwell Collins and by third-party suppliers. Equipment and software consists of a combination of previously approved equipment, equipment that will have minor changes, and equipment that will be submitted for first-time approval. The Rockwell Collins team has the responsibility for avionics system design, development, integration, and certification tasks while also supporting Embraer with airplane tasks, such as integrating the avionics system with the other airplane systems, system installation, and flight test support. This program has made initial hardware and software deliveries and is quickly working towards the next major milestone of airplane first flight. 2011 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 1
II. VALUE CREATION = 20 POINTS Value: What is the value, competitive positioning, advantage, and return created by this program to your: Customers National interests, war fighter Company Strength, bottom line, and shareholders Scientific/technical value (particularly for R&D programs) Excellence and Uniqueness: What makes this program unique? Why should this program be awarded the Program Excellence Award? The Embraer Legacy 450/500 program provides significant value to Rockwell Collins as it enables growth of market share in the Business and Regional Jet market by adding a key customer to our primary accounts. As a new entrant to the mid-jet market segment, Embraer is well-positioned to capture market-share with Rockwell Collins as the avionics supplier. This program has also enabled Rockwell Collins to continue to expand service and support solutions in Brazil, which will be critical to future program pursuit activity. By developing this relationship with Embraer through the Legacy 450/500 program, opportunities for business growth in other market segments, such as military and regional jet markets, have been enabled. A recent program award for the Embraer KC-390 tanker/transport was enabled through the team s performance on the Legacy 450/500 program. The KC- 390 program will leverage the Pro Line Fusion system that is on the Legacy 450/500. The Embraer program is unique since through this program we had both the challenge and reward of working with an international, forward-looking customer on a product that will be a market success. Through the pursuit and development process we have learned from each other and by working together have overcome many challenges, both internally and externally. In November 2010 at the Embraer Supplier Conference, Embraer recognized Rockwell Collins with the Best Supplier Development Program award. Receiving this award was an honor for the program team and demonstrates the value and trust that we are building with our customer. Program excellence has been achieved by applying lessons learned and by developing best practices that other programs are now applying. III. ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESSES/BEST PRACTICES: (HOW DO YOU DO THINGS) = 30 POINTS Strategic: Opportunity Management - Describe how your program has identified its operational Initially, the business opportunity was identified as strategic due to the market success and strategic intent of Embraer. With this intent to build business jets in the core of our market, we pursued this business over several years. Going forward, the opportunity is managed via the SFP (strategic financial plan) 2011 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 2
and business opportunity, and manages this opportunity throughout the program s life cycle. Strategic: Strategic Supply Chain Integration and Cost Effectiveness Management: - Describe how your program is integrating its supply chain to assure visibility and adapting longterm cost effectiveness up and down the supply chain. Strategic: Operational Integration and Systems Engineering Describe the challenges faced by your program in terms of integrating the system into its operational environment and its impact on systems engineering planning and management. process that is done on an annual basis. In this process, updated opportunities (sales potential) and associated investments (expenses) are identified and strategic directions for the next five years are established. The Legacy 450/500 program has leveraged various shared service organizations within Rockwell Collins in order to achieve successful results in the areas of operations, purchasing, and sub-contracts. For internally built products, we leverage our operations teams to build and test products. The largest challenge the team has faced was communicating demand for development products and ensuring that the program s priority relative to other programs pulling for similar products. This was successfully managed by engaging the cross-functional team in monthly demand and supply cadences. Several products needed to complete the ship set are sub-contracted products. Within the supply-chain, sub-contract program managers have the responsibility of coordinating the suppliers development and delivery performance. With these sub-contracts managers engaged in the overall program reviews, we were successfully able to navigate on-time deliveries from five key equipment suppliers. Finally, in order to continue to maintain cost effectiveness in the supply chain, specific LEAN events were conducted which worked to get improved purchase agreements in place for many key products. As part of the supply chain organization, a process has been established to grade suppliers (minimize, sustain, maximize). This grading is used as part of new supplier selections as well as when establishing updated purchasing agreements. The Rockwell Collins the Pro Line Fusion system leverages IMA (Integrated Modular Avionics) architecture resulting in a reduced SWAP (size, weight and power) system that also enables growth for future functionality and regulatory operational requirements. The IMA architecture, which shares a common computing platform, is comprised of multiple complex interdependent functions to provide the avionic system solution for the Legacy 450/500 Program. One of the System Engineering challenges of this architecture was to effectively decompose the requirements, design, and interfaces to leverage the previously certified Rockwell Collins products while incorporating the new and unique features for the program. The planning, coordination and timing of bringing these features together in a logical and coordinated manner was challenging to manage across the multiple product development teams. These challenges drove the team to develop some of the best practices discussed later in this write-up. 2011 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 3
Operational: Planning, Monitoring, and Controlling - Describe your planning and resource allocation processes. How do you monitor and review your program s progress and make corrections to keep the program on track? Operational: Supply Chain and Logistics Management -- What processes, tools and relationship-building methods have you used to develop, refine and improve supply chain and stakeholder integration? Please indicate also methods used to analyze/fact-find regarding supplier proposals. This is one of the most imperative needs of our industry please provide specific details and data that assisted you in gauging the effectiveness. Operational: System Integration, Testing & Reviews - Describe the activities and processes used to succeed in your system integration, and testing. How did you conduct system design and technical reviews? Resource demand by work center (domain skill type) is loaded (and baselined) into our SAP system. Tools are then used for resource managers to assign people to the demand. With these two components in place, team leaders are able to see supply vs. demand staffing metrics. These charts are monitored on a monthly and often weekly basis across the organization. As part of program reviews, any staffing issues are discussed and either resolved or alternatives identified. Project engineers update resource demand for their WBS on a monthly basis, so this evaluation is refreshed monthly. The team also leverages a common change management tool across the product lines to systematically decompose required work into sets of structured change requests. This tool is used to capture, track and communicate the progress of the development activities. Rockwell Collins assigns a subcontract program manager at the start of a program. The subcontract program manager manages subcontractors to meet customer requirements, manages flowdown of specifications, statement of work and other contractual requirements, and resolves supplier execution issues while monitoring subcontractor cost/schedule adherence. The subcontract program manager will coordinate and oversee all subcontract activities related to the avionics development program and is responsible for the relationship and overall performance of the supply base. The subcontract program manager will manage all subcontractor scope and is accountable to the program manager for subcontractor performance. Activities include subcontractor policies and procedure audits, rate and capability reviews, manufacturing readiness reviews, monthly program reviews to track cost/schedule/risks, and ensure subcontractor membership of integrated product teams in support of avionics program and objectives. With an increasing amount of sub-contracted scope, the organization has moved to increase both the role (scope) and the responsibility of the subcontract program manager. The Program Systems Engineering team leveraged a structured technical baseline review process prior to launching into the software and hardware development efforts. This process enabled complex interdependent features and functions to be decomposed, designed, analyzed and harmonized early in the development phase. The team then leveraged a configuration managed building block approach to choreograph the integration of the multiple IMA applications. Prior to entering into the integration activity, structured IRR (Integration Readiness Reviews) were held with each domain application. After completing the integration and evaluation of the domain applications, the team held a Formal TRR (Test Readiness 2011 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 4
Operational: Risk / Opportunity Management Describe the processes used to identify both risks and opportunity and to assure potential for both is addressed effectively Please indicate any forwardleaning processes to support. Team Leadership: Team Culture and Motivation Describe how you created your team spirit and culture, and accomplished entire team integration and individual team member motivation. Team Leadership: Lessons Learned and Knowledge Management Describe how you collect lessons learned and best practices, and how they are shared with your team and Review) prior to entering into Formal Systems Test. This structured approach has been documented in our Systems Engineering Management Plan for future programs to utilize and has enabled a more coordinated and predictable program execution. Lessons learned from other programs were used to help drive this change into program execution processes. Risk and opportunity management is performed at multiple levels on this program. At the business level key financial R/Os are part of our quarterly business plan review. At the program level, R/Os are identified and managed both internally and externally with the customer. A program level risk impact model was established to allow the program to categorize R/Os in terms of both impact and probability. This approach allows focus and prioritization on the near term/high impact R/Os. For these R/Os, action plans are established and cadenced as a means to actively work to mitigate risks and harvest opportunities. Sub-system product teams maintain their own risk registers and a process has been established which enables these teams to elevate R/Os to the program level. Organizational structure of the systems engineering team (customer/program-focused) and collocation of key program leaders has been key to establishing team culture and motivation. Other specific actions used to create team culture and spirit include: 1 ) bi-annual all-team meetings which allow communication of airplane level information to broader audience including the sub-system product development teams, operations, quality, customer support, and other shared services 2) inviting Embraer Program Manager to speak to the entire team on multiple occasions (I specifically asked him to tell the team what areas needed improvement from his perspective), 3) monthly recognition awards to key team contributors, 4) periodic and frequent team building activities, and 5) after-hours social hours with program leadership. We prided our team on being the fun team to work with and we knew that our actions were working when employees were excited to be assigned to the Legacy 450/500 program. Our team created the mantra of Delight the customer while making the program profitable and fun! Several LEAN events were sponsored to capture lessons learned throughout the program. These events were typically held after key phases/milestones during the program. The goal of these events was to assess past experiences and learn from them as we went into the next phase of the program and also to document some of the lessons for future programs to benefit from. Lessons were also gathered from similar programs that were ahead of us in the development cycle. Many of the 2011 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 5
company to improve performance. Also how are you capturing expertise and knowledge to assure availability over the life of the program? Team Leadership: Leadership Development How do you develop team s skills and build future leaders Best (& Next) Practices: Identify your program s specific Best Practices that you believe are unique, and could be shared with others and become industry s Next Practices. challenges that these programs were facing provided the motivation to implement some process changes to improve our development approach for the Legacy 450/500 program. Live sessions to communicate lessons learned were held and people across the organization were invited. We also video-taped one of these sessions so people could view at a later time. The lessons learned presentation and material was posted on our Rockwell Collins Engineering epedia intranet for enterprise visibility and access. Rockwell Collins utilizes a Life Cycle Value Stream Manager (LCVSM) approach to product and program management. This process includes clear roles and responsibilities and also necessary training to support our program leaders. As part of this process, future leaders are identified and selected for roles with increasing levels of responsibility. Use of a mentor/mentee relationship between more experienced leaders and less experienced leaders has also proven to be a very effective method. Best practices were documented for numerous portions of the systems engineering practice. These best practices serve as the basis of our SEMP (systems engineering management plan) and provide employees a documented training/instruction means and also a basis for future programs to leverage. Some of the key best practices that we developed included the process for capturing test allocation (what level/group would test system requirements), integration/test readiness reviews, and performing functional level technical baseline reviews. The other area that was developed and which has now become standard practice is the process of establishing regular integration events which would allow system teams to define backbone configuration and then sub-system teams could build/test against this configuration before bringing an updated software load to systems integration. Updated functionality was targeted to specific events/loads which then allowed key dependencies between sub-systems to be coordinated and scheduled. IV. ADAPTING TO COMPLEXITY: (HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH YOUR PROGRAM S UNIQUE COMPLEXITIES) = 20 POINTS Identify the Program s Market Uncertainty level. Then describe how you deal and address this specific uncertainty: - Derivative an Development and application of Pro Line Fusion Avionics is a new Platform that that significantly extends the avionics capability as compared to existing product lines. Application of this system to the Embraer Legacy 450/500 applies this new system to the midsized jet market segment for the first time. Market uncertainty is primarily a factor in how the airplane will perform in the market 2011 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 6
improvement of an existing product/system. - Platform a new generation in an existing product line. - New to the Market a product or system adopted from another market - New to the World - breakthrough product, never seen before Identify the Program s Technological Uncertainty using the definitions below. Then describe how you deal and address this uncertainty: - Low-tech: application of mature, well-established technology - Medium Technology: existing technology modified to meet new design requirements - High-Technology: recently developed new technology - Super High-Technology: non-existing technology that needs to be developed during the program. Identify the level of your System Complexity using the definitions below. Then explain how you are dealing with this level of complexity: - An Assembly performing a single function. - A Sub-system fitting within a larger system. - A System a collection of subsystems performing multiple functions. - An Array a System of Systems ; a widely (e.g. sales projections of the Embraer Legacy 450 and Legacy 500 aircraft). Since Embraer is a new entrant to the mid-sized business jet segment and since this program is being executed during a very challenging time for business aviation, we continue to deal with this uncertainly. Dealing with this level of uncertainty is dealt with based on: 1) Rockwell Collins internal assessment and validation of the market conditions and airplane sales potential and 2) continued strategic intent to expand our business with Embraer in Brazil. Across the program, there is a mix of technology levels, but this program is characterized between medium and high technology. Within the Pro Line Fusion System, we are bringing first of kind features and functionality to business aviation and we are also modifying existing designs to meet evolving market and regulatory requirements. High-technology areas typically carry additional risk/opportunity and therefore these areas will typically appear more often in the program and sub-system risk registers. A regular cadence review cycle is established which allows communication across the program and organization on the progress and roadblocks that the development teams are experiencing. Many times prioritization of key resources may be needed to assist with addressing incremental issues. Regardless of the technology level, we encourage development teams to capture and maintain key assumptions as a means to understand how the team has developed schedule/cost plans. Management of these assumptions provides one of the means to manage the uncertainly that is a natural part of a complex development such as the Legacy 450/500 program. The Pro Line Fusion System is collection of multiple sub-systems (Flight display system, flight management system, maintenance system, radio tuning system, communication system, surveillance system, etc.) that are integrated to serve as the avionics system for the aircraft. This system serves as a sub-system to the aircraft as it interfaces with more than 20 other systems (engines, doors, brakes, flight recorder, SATCOM, auxiliary power unit, flight controls, etc.). Management of this system complexity involves multiple levels of system requirements and integration activities. Within the avionics system, the complexities of this integration have been managed by means of some of the best practices that the program has put into practice. Technical baseline reviews were used at each sub-system level to capture the baseline product and the coordinate the changes 2011 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 7
dispersed collection of systems serving a common mission. Identify the Pace and Urgency of your team s effort. Then describe how you deal with the program s pace requirements: - Regular timing no specific time pressures. Fast/Competitive time to market is important for competitiveness. - Time Critical absolute and critical-to-success deadline. - Blitz crisis element driving the need for immediate response Other Complexities & Uncertainties - Describe other complexities and unknown factors faced by this program and how you addressed them. planned for the sub-system. At this point, test approach, key dependencies, and delivery schedule were coordinated. As the development progressed, integration readiness reviews and test readiness reviews were used as means to ensure that sub-system tasks were adequately completed prior to advancing to system integration or to formal system testing. Management of the integration with other aircraft systems is largely an Embraer responsibility, but since any interface change likely affects the avionics systems, the Legacy 450/500 team was very involved with management of this complexity. 3 rd party integration events were completed at Rockwell Collins early in the program to ensure that interface requirements were correctly captured and understood in the same way by all parties (Rockwell Collins, Embraer, and 3 rd party). This activity identified several interface issues that could be addressed in advance of airplane level integration. The pace and urgency of the team s effort is Time Critical since there is tremendous pressure to have the system and the completed aircraft available to the market as the business jet market recovers. Also, there are several customer initiatives to significantly improve the product and system maturity early in the program. These initiatives are driven from lessons learned in order to make initial production as well as the flight test and certification process more efficient with significantly lower rework that experienced on previous program. To deal with this pace requirement, we have worked to put a rightsized systems team in place, have adjusted development plans to accelerate some functionality into earlier software builds than initially planned, and used both physical and digital modeling techniques to move definition maturity to the left. Two other complexities that this program faced included learning to work together again with Embraer on a clean sheet aircraft design after many years apart and managing the evolving requirements and expectations from both companies. For both of these complexities, frequent communication and alignment at all levels of leadership was very important to program success. As issues or differences were identified, the teams first worked to understand each other and then worked to identify potential solutions. 2011 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 8
V. METRICS (HOW DO YOU MEASURE PROGRAM S PERFORMANCE) = 30 POINTS Customer - How do you measure the impact of your program on your customer and your customer s satisfaction? Include a description of your metrics, as well as numerical evidence. Performance - How do you measure your program s performance in traditional terms such as schedule, budget, requirements, and business results? Preparing the Future - How do you measure and assess the long-term contribution of your program to the corporation/organization? At an organizational level, we have shifted our measurement of customer satisfaction to % satisfied customers. For example, if there are four key accounts, the performance and measure at each customer would represent either a 0 or 25% weighting to our total. Each customer has different measures for satisfaction, so this approach allows us to use the customer s viewpoint on satisfaction and allows each of our account teams to focus on what is important to our customers. For a new customer such as Embraer, this will go into effect once we are through the development program. During the development program, stoplight charts are used to provide a measure/view in each of the cross-functional areas. These stoplight charts are updated and reviewed monthly with the leadership teams at each company. This approach works by each team (customer and Rockwell Collins) providing a red, yellow, or green status across topics that cover the program. A key component of this method is looking for areas that the two teams had a different viewpoint of program status. These areas then became key discussion points at program reviews, with the intent on better understanding each other, and more importantly, aligning on the next steps. A high level of schedule and budget performance is measured with our earned value system. This approach allows a measure at each WBS or work element level such that early detection of challenges or opportunities can be identified on a monthly basis. This system is driven primarily based on milestones and the weighting assigned to each milestone. In addition, we have coded several of the milestones as critical milestones such that these items can be extracted for use on a higher level integrated master schedule. Once a challenge area is identified, it is necessary to move to more detailed schedules in order to help team s establish recovery plans. Other metrics, typically in the form of scorecard/stoplight or line of balance, are used to assist in program measurement. Examples include: interface requirements line of balance, integration line of balance, change request/problem report line of balance, and subsystem status scorecard/stoplight. There are two main methods that enable us to measure and assess the contribution of the program. First, on a quarterly basis, we update program financials and business case. This provides a current view of the overall business along with current risks and opportunities. Second, on an annual basis, we reassess the overall accounts and market segments and make updated sales vs. investment projections for a 5-10 year planning horizon. 2011 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 9
Team - How do you measure and assess the impact of your program on your team development and employee satisfaction? Unique Metrics - Describe any unique metrics you are using to measure your program s progress and how do you focus it for outstanding success. There are several elements that are monitored and observed to determine team development and employee satisfaction. One prime area is the attitude, level of engagement, and overall morale of the team. This feedback is gathered both informally and formally; whether through conversations held with employees, the reputation our team has in the larger organization, feedback at skip level meetings, or our formal 360 Degree Feedback Reporting Tools. Additionally we look at the promotion and growth opportunities occurring for our program team members. We pride ourselves that several of our team members have been identified as high performers and have moved up in responsibility within our company. We also monitor the time to fill open positions, preference ratings given for our program team during new grad hiring events, as well as monitoring the attrition rate and reason for leaving. As part of measuring our progress on the interface definitions across over 20 different systems that needed to interface with our avionics system, we created a stoplight chart that measured the key aspects of the interface definition. These key aspects included physical definition (pinout, type of interface, type of discrete, voltage limits, etc.), the logical definition (digital bus parameter definitions, discrete state definitions, scaling definitions for analog inputs, parameters to send to flight data recorder, etc.), and the associated logic equations for crew alerting and maintenance messages. Through this approach the team was able to quickly communicate to the Embraer team the interface areas that were maturing (from our viewpoint) vs. the ones that needed more attention. This simple metric was one of the most useful approaches in providing a line of sight status to the customer during requirements capture. Due to the success of the stoplight chart for managing the interfaces, we used a similar approach as we worked towards integration testing. The integration stoplight characterized status on key areas/gates such as test objectives, test procedures, rig wiring definition, and key supplier and Embraer contacts by name. By using this approach, successful integration testing was completed with over 20 different systems over the course of 5 months. A metric used internally that was very useful in program coordination was the status of the individual change requests/problem reports to the system. These tasks were assigned to specific integration loads and a line of balance (plan vs. actual) was used to monitor the progress towards key milestones. 2011 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 10