Concurrent Design Facility plays key role in future ESA missions

ESA’s CDF is a room equipped with a network of computers, multimedia devices and software tools, allowing a team of experts from several disciplines to apply the concurrent engineering method to their projects. Their main objective is to assess the technical and financial feasibility of space missions and new spacecraft concepts.

Massimo Bandecchi is director of the Concurrent Design Unit at the ESA Technology and Research Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. In 1998, he was one of the co-founders of the Concurrent Design Facility.

Bandecchi believes the CDF represents a new, more effective and faster way of performing interdisciplinary assessments of future missions. ”It also has the effect of bringing scientists and engineers closer together, since they are physically in the same room, with the same tools and communication systems. This allows them to communicate easily, immediately and in a much more effective way.”

Rune Eriksen is head of Industrial Coordination at the Norwegian Space

Using the CDF, the ESA team of experts performs an average of 15 advanced studies a year, with the simultaneous participation of all disciplines involved. ”We have reproduced all the workstations and engineering tools from the labs and offices,” explains Bandecchi, “and connected them all together in order to work collectively. The same complex engineering tools that used to run on mainframes are now running on laptops.”

According to Bandecchi, the teams actually perform four tasks at the same time: the design of the subsystem, the presentation of what they propose, review of the other disciplines, and, finally, documentation of their work online.

The Norwegian Space Centre

Norway is one of the 17 member states of the ESA. The country’s funding and interests in ESA are coordinated by the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC), a government agency that promotes the development, co-ordination and evaluation of Norwegian activities in space.

Rune Eriksen, the leader for Industrial Coordination at NSC, says he and his colleagues started promoting the use of EXPRESS to ESA back in 2002. “We already knew the EXPRESS language from Jotne EPM Technology quite well when we learned that ESA was looking for a technology partner for its Concurrent Design Facility. We thought it would be an ideal solution.”

Open standards from Jotne EPM Technology

Open and publicly available standards, information models and proven technologies were some of the key factors behind ESA’s decision to go for EXPRESS as the data modeling language for the Open Concurrent Design Server.

Kjell Bengtsson, marketing director of Jotne EPM Technology, explains, “Over the years, we have worked closely with some of the most advanced aerospace and defense projects in the world. We have proven that we are trustworthy and capable. With support from the Norwegian Space Centre new doors have been opened for us in the space sector.”

Bengtsson acknowledges that the network of contacts and insight to existing projects that the NSC provides is invaluable for any company. “To have access to ESA contracts will extend our technical leadership, bring new products to users, and expand our customer base in this sector. EPMT is very pleased to be part of this collaborative effort.”