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Holistic Change Management of New Materials

in Design/Production

Rich Fields Senior Engineering Manager

Mechanical Engineering Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control

Accelerated Introduction of New Material Systems

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Today’s Outline

• Part 1: What is needed and why

• Part 2: Material selections gone wrong – what not to do

• Part 3: How to do it right, as quickly as possible

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Part 1: To use a new material… what do engineers need,

and why?

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

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Technology Hype-Curve: Perception vs Reality

1) Beware of “smoke and mirrors”; don't drink the Kool-aid (especially your own) – know the truth

2) Manage the expectations of others

VISI

BIL

ITY

TIME/MATURITY

TECHNOLOGY TRIGGER

PEAK OF INFLATED EXPECTATIONS

TROUGH OF DISILLUSIONMENT

SLOPE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

PLATEAU OF PRODUCTIVITY

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Back to Basics: Materials/Processes

• Design Engineers require consistency in the behavior of their materials; which implies imposition of controls, especially: – Elemental constituents of the material. – Manufacturing process, which can create different material

micro-structures. • Controls are implemented by requirements within material and

process specifications, and are best evaluated by physical experiment (test).

• The opposite of consistency? Variation. The ability of a part to tolerate variation depends on the application of the part.

• Material and process variation (control) matters most with structure: – “a deformable solid body which is capable of carrying loads and

transmitting these loads to other parts of the body” – Peery/Azar

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Catch-22 for New Materials

• The way we get to know materials is by using them.

• We can best control materials that we know well.

• By definition, we don’t know new materials well.

• As a result we can’t control new materials as well. • Therefore, we don’t want to use new materials.

To break this risk-aversion cycle we must purposefully acquire /implement new knowledge.

Engineering Rule: When in doubt, make it stout, out of things you know about

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Technical Readiness Level (TRL) 6 / 7 “The Place Ideas Go To Die”

TRL 1-3 Discovery, Basic Research

The region between TRL 6 and TRL 7 becomes a vast gulf that neither research nor industry want to tackle.

TRL 4-6 Applied Research, Early Prototype Testing

TRL 7-9 Qualification, Production

Universities and National Laboratories

Corporations

Discovery Basic Research

Applied Research

Product Development Production

“Valley of Death”

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Vocabulary of Risk Resistance / Discomfort

• New

• Exploration

• Research

• We’ve never done that

• I don’t know

• I’m not sure

• It depends

• Variation

Lack of knowledge reinforces immobilizing fears of unknowns and unknown unknowns

Risk Averse

Opportunity Welcome

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Risk Management and Change Leadership

• Good opportunities may create risk but they can bring rewards.

• Introduction of new technology, including new materials, is inherently an exercise in Risk/Opportunity Management (ROM).

• ROM techniques / tools have been taught in business management schools for many years; apply them.

• The ROM challenge for a new material is to correctly identify the risks and opportunities, and correctly execute mitigation.

For the right opportunity, great leadership embraces well-managed risk

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Specific Problems of New Materials

• Industry standard specifications are typically not available.

• Process sensitivities not well known; resulting variation leads to broad and unreliable material property distributions and uncertain outliers.

• Problems with correct test method execution may make precise and unbiased measurement of variation difficult.

• New methods of design/analysis may be required; some needs may not have convenient (e.g., cheap, fast, reliable) solutions.

• Previous production cost models may no longer apply, new data may be needed; justification of capital costs may be more difficult.

• Use of a well-known material but with an altered process cycle – such as required for high-volume lost-cost production - may reset what you think you know.

“Toto - We’re not in Kansas anymore”

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Getting Past the Catch-22

• These same problems have always existed, and will continue to reappear as new materials are discovered or new applications attempted.

• The materials/applications may be industry-dependent but at the highest level the resolution process is (mostly) industry-independent.

• Applied process and logic can win the day; methodical approaches resolve many of the problems, and other problems can often be managed.

• Create and execute – and manage - a plan that obtains the missing knowledge and feeds it into your system.

The core issue is a Knowledge Deficit

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Risk/Opportunity Balance Change Resistance

• Can be technical, psychological, organizational – or any combination of these.

• The solutions to non-technical resistance differ depending on the direction and type.

• Can come from below, or from above.

Change Infatuation • The problem of “technology that can do no wrong” often arises when

misinformed executives are in the wrong part of the hype curve at the wrong time.

• Often aggravated by a biased senior technical change agent with undue influence who stimulates action without sufficient informed review.

Risk/Opportunity Balance avoids change extremes of Resistance and Infatuation

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Part 2: Risk Management Failures in Material Selection Decisions

- Materials Gone Wild

All materials are “equal”, but some materials are more (or less) equal than others.

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When Things Go Wrong It Can Get Ugly Fast

We’re not talking just blowing Task Budgets or Project Delays: – Whole projects have collapsed. – Entire divisions - even companies - have been severely damaged,

even destroyed.

How? Top-Level Gotchas: – Failure to fully define requirements

(and it’s cousin, Requirements Creep). – Failure to consider those requirements holistically. – Poor estimates of nonrecurring cost or time. – Failure to consider single points of failure in the supply chain, and

related lack of supplier support. – Wrong assessment of material/process maturity.

The technical “bogey-man” is real

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Example #1: Technical Staff Overconfidence • A new program requires unusual material requirements; an apparent solution is

found in a new filament which is relatively new to market and has never been used by program staff. Nevertheless the material system seems familiar in appearance and behavior. An early assessment based on limited sampling and non-representative processing creates positive results and contributes to staff confidence.

• Staff recommends moving forward (despite, in hindsight, failing to properly exercise material development boundaries). Their recommendation - combined with the aggressive schedule - causes leadership to approve adoption of the new material.

• Full-scale development starts with a 7-figure order of material placed, using the initial limited sampling as the basis for procurement. Problems immediately ensue; the processed material is frequently defective with excessive porosity and unacceptable surface finish. Iterative process maturation attempts usually fail, but sporadic successes confound staff decisions. (Much later, the specification was proven to be incorrectly defined with inadequate resin content.)

• Though far from the only issue being battled by the program, the delays in and difficulties with development processing contribute to the eventual demise of the program.

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Example #2: Failure to Treat Design Requirements Holistically • During development of a new vehicle the preliminary design is determined

to be overweight (i.e., certain subsystem teams failed to meet their weight initial allocation).

• The system weight requirement is re-allocated to the subsystem design teams; teams with overweight designs are directed to execute weight reduction measures. Note: The baseline design is inherently “tail” heavy, but the system Center-of-Gravity (CG) requirement was not properly factored into the weight re-allocation. (Efforts by the Subsystem Teams to elevate this issue and request relief were rejected.)

• With management approval, the “front end” subsystem team expends extraordinary effort and money to reduce their element of weight by incorporating a new exotic material invention into a redesigned subsystem.

• These heroic efforts succeed in significantly reducing weight in the front end subsystem, but during integration and test - due to vehicle-level CG issues - the final assembly requires large amounts of lead ballast in the front end.

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Example #3: Inappropriate Processes Selected for Product Design • A design development group baselines a process that has never been

attempted at that location, for that product.

• During manufacturing, the process results in unacceptable large-scale defects which don’t manifest themselves until late in assembly. Repeated attempts to correct the process are inadequate (though improvements are made) and the defects prove difficult to properly repair.

• Consultation with multiple external experts results in confounding advice on both the capability of the repaired defect and the likelihood of success for elimination of the defects. Management elects to proceed at risk and continue production due to contractual schedule requirements.

• By the time best evidence indicates that repaired units are not adequate for long-term service the program is well into production and delivery.

• Lawsuits ensue, products are pulled from service (eventually all of them); ultimately the program is cancelled and the entire business line is divested.

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Example #4: Material Selection Not Ideal, Though Successfully Applied • A product development team baselines a process where a key design

driver (again) is weight. Elements in the team are strongly pushing a particular composite solution for weight reduction; consultation with a composite SME urges a more conventional path … but the task lead continues with the original solution.

• The product was eventually – after considerable added effort, cost, and delays - successfully implemented (though the team had to be reorganized and expanded to fix the issues).

• However, the product of this material/process was expensive and difficult-to-build, and consistently challenged efforts to keep the process in control.

• Alternatives would not have been guaranteed to be problem free but generally would have had fewer issues with escapes and been less expensive, though slightly heavier.

• (And, in the end, the system had to be ballasted anyway, like example #2.)

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Example #5: Hype-Influenced Process Selection for Wrong Application • A new product design baselined a process that had been

“sold” to the project by influential powers as novel, efficient, and ground-breaking, without regard to a real trade study.

• In an era of special focus on affordability the process was portrayed as especially low-cost. (And for certain applications that might be correct.)

• After considerable development the process is successfully implemented in the application - but as implemented it is (versus alternatives):

– Probably more expensive,

– Almost certainly less efficient (heavier), and

– Only available to a very limited number of suppliers, making multi-sourcing far more difficult.

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Example #6: Inadequate Conclusions from Structural Substantiation Plan

• I normally really enjoy driving my primary commuting car; I own and have been driving nothing but this make for >15 years. Why am I now currently driving a 2015 rental car?

• As is now well-known, an automotive part supplier for many brands released into production a safety critical subsystem which was susceptible to degradation under environmental exposure – this the air-bag.

• A properly executed structural substantiation plan should have discovered this before production.

• Results to date: At least 12 deaths known; injuries to many hundreds of others; 24M recalled in US alone. Broad global recall could reach hundreds of millions of vehicles.

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• The cost of correction can negate all potential positives.

• Proper development testing and evaluation will uncover new considerations; but those efforts needs to be funded and scheduled.

• Reactive M&P development is inefficient; as much as possible fund M&P solutions that can be applied to large parts of the overall organization, as a tool in a larger toolkit.

Accelerated Improvement is Both Intelligent and Holistic

Complex problems have simple, easy-to-understand, wrong answers

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Educate Your Team

• Ensure your team understands the overall process of material development and maturation, especially in bridging between TRL 6 and 7.

• Be honest about the analytical capabilities and limitations of your team: – correct critical shortcomings,

– factor overall abilities into your design and verification plans;

– provide any supplemental training or engage consultant as needed.

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Part 3: Best Practices

for Accelerating New Materials into Products

Neither over-promise nor under-deliver

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Keys to Low-Risk Acceleration

• Multi-Disciplinary knowledge is needed to bridge key technology development decision points in various skills: materials, design, structural analysis, manufacturing, quality, and procurement.

• Purposely Plan to Mitigate TRL <7 Risks for new materials, using Risk/Opportunity Management techniques to prioritize selection as well as standard critical path planning to manage the key schedule drivers.

• Tailor Plans to reduce cost/schedule while keeping those elements that reduce risk for critical items; manage those plans: – The process for accelerated maturation using risk-

mitigation is the Structural Substantiation Plan (SSP) – The Building Block Approach (BBA) is the central portion

of the SSP

The Building Block Approach correlates test and analysis over a range of increasingly complicated physical geometries / loading

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Path Forward is Need Dependent • If a specific product “go” decision has already been made:

– This is relatively late in decision making and development. – At this point trade studies, design drivers, selection decisions become very

program specific, but if possible engage your larger enterprise to understand if any synergism is possible.

– Get unbiased off-program expert views on true cost / schedule needs of material development, and include them in project planning

• At organization level; proactive tool maturation for future: – Expand the organizational design toolbox by fundingTRL 6 to 7 bridging

development in advance of the need. – Predictive trade studies can be based on a combination of historical and

projected future requirements/needs. Look for greatest bang for the buck. – Collect trade study results into like groups based on anticipated new

products.

Do your homework: Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups

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Before You Make Your Plans • Truly know your design requirements and

design trade space.

• Execute an informed trade study to rank top material(s) for the design configuration; select the materials to be taken forward.

• Stable processes and related specifications must exist for these materials. The team has experience with the manufacturing methods and tooling.

• Expected defects have been assessed consistent with available NDE methods.

• Analytical capabilities/limitations for the materials / processes / construction are understood.

Missing any of these steps / no plans to resolve them? You are running with pointy scissors.

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What Does a Stable Process Look Like?

• Documented specifications (material specifications, process specifications) provide limits to controllable variation.

• Demonstrated by testing over the necessary environments, and incorporating major sources of variation (lot variation, operator variation, equipment variation, location variation, etc.).

• When property response can be statistically predicted regardless of the variable, the materials are in control.

• These statistical values are used both to control the specifications as well as to create design values for the design engineer.

The result: repeatable engineering properties

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Plan in Advance for Inspection / Defects • Process and defect anomalies are nearly

infinite in possibility.

• We experience these anomalies through test (destructive and non-destructive) and performance evaluation.

• Non-Destructive Examination (NDE) techniques need to be assessed/selected to determine the best appropriate cost-effective ways to control the process.

• Incorporate quality and inspection as derived requirements (if not explicit) as part of design, along with sustainment and life-cycle costs (e.g., repair), recycling, disposal, etc.

We cannot know in advance the never experienced; we cannot analyze in advance that which we don’t know.

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Correlate Test with Analysis • Appreciate the differing failure modes of

composites and how they can change with structural complexity level and environment.

• ICME (Integrated Computational Materials Engineering) generally plays a supporting role, not a central role; for example:

– Analytical Design of Experiments (DOE) – Maturation of process stabilization – Material Selection Trade Studies – Correlation of NDE/Effects of Defects/Material Response (for pre-specified defects)

• Once inherent defect families are understood, ICME (analysis) correlated

with test can be used with NDE to bound the effects of those defects.

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Building-Block Approach to Structural Substantiation (as implemented in CMH-17 Vol 1, 2.2.1)

Major levels of Test / Analysis • Assembly, Component,

Subcomponent, Detail

• Element

• Material, Constituent

Simpler/more numerous items toward the base; More complicated/less numerous towards the apex.

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Use of Building-Block Approach (BBA) in a Structural Substantiation Plan (SSP) • (Again) Ensure selected processes are at

the start: stable, documented, controlled.

• If necessity requires further acceleration, conduct process development in parallel with eyes wide open and risk plans in place.

• Identify key risks and unknowns.

• Tailor the SSP and BBA (following slide) to minimize cost/schedule while mitigation high-risk areas

• Risks not incorporated into the central plan may need their own risk mitigation tasks run in parallel, or be formally monitored on a R/O register.

• Re-assess test/analysis correlation at each step and adjust as needed, incorporating discoveries into both the plan and the design package.

Chief Objections to SSP / BBA Result From Failure to Understand or Tailor Them

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Tailoring the SSP/BBA • Ensure correct understanding of top

and derived program requirements.

• Determine type of structure, criticality, load paths, expected failure modes, environments. Adjust for findings.

• Correlate preliminary analysis results with preliminary testing results – don’t wait!

• Reduce planned testing for environments, properties that will not drive the design.

• Work with material suppliers to pool data with other sources (if available).

• Factor in expected production sources (internal, single source, dual or multiple, open-source).

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Conclusions / Actions • Immature technology requires

expert-led development and management-supported resources (time, money) to mature for design and production without program-killing errors.

• Development time / cost is a spectrum function of the part and application, but managed acceleration is possible.

• Seek lower-risk “low-hanging fruit” applications for initial development. This allows both broadening and deepening of technical skills while bridging the TRL valley of death.

• Affordability break-even points are industry/part/design specific. Seek out designs that result in cost-effective subsystems not otherwise easily attainable.

• But be cautious of locking-in part designs to unique processes until affordability trades and manufacturing studies have been conducted.

• Want to implement change still faster? Supply more money. Limited funds inherently reduce breadth and pace of change.

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Questions/Comments

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