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- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!news.claremont.edu!ucivax!gateway
- From: nancy@murphy.ICS.UCI.EDU (Nancy Leveson)
- Subject: Re: Concurrent Engineering
- Message-ID: <9212241539.aa11753@Paris.ics.uci.edu>
- Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
- Reply-To: nancy@ics.uci.edu, leveson@cs.washington.edu
- Lines: 49
- Date: 24 Dec 92 23:39:15 GMT
-
-
- (I just wrote something about concurrent engineering last week for a
- book I am working on.)
-
- Concurrent Engineering was a popular idea in the 1950s. The political
- pressure was very high to develop a nuclear warhead with deliverable
- capability. The concurrent engineering philosophy was developed in an
- attempt to shorten the time required between the concept and definition
- of a weapon system and the initial operational capability.
-
- Under the concurrency concept, the missiles and the facilities in which
- they were to be maintained in ready conditions for launch were built at
- the same time that tests of the missiles and training of personnel
- were going on. It was recognized that there would be many modifications
- and retrofit efforts that would cost more money. However, with the world
- nuclear threat, it was concluded that additional expenditure of money was
- a cheap way to buy time (remember, this was the same time we threw away
- $15 billion on a boondoggle to build an atomic airplane, and at that time
- a billion dollars actually bought something :-)), and a tremendous effort
- was exerted to make the concurrent approach work.
-
- The result? Within 18 months after the fleet of 72 Atlas F ICBMs became
- operational, four blew up in their silos during operational testing.
- Multimillion-dollar missile/silo launch complexes were lost in frequent
- accidents. [More details about some of these accidents will be found in
- my book, if I ever get it finished.] The missiles also had an extremely
- low launch success rate.
-
- Not only were the losses themselves costly, but the resulting investigations
- found serious safety deficiencies in the systems that would require
- extensive modifications to correct. In fact, the cost of the modifications
- would have been so high that a decision was made to retire the entire
- weapon system and accelerate deployment of the Minuteman. Thus, a major
- weapon system originally designed to be used for a minimum of ten years
- was in service was for less than two years primarily because of safety
- deficiencies. Better system engineering and engineering management methods
- were developed for the later systems that provided up-front planning and
- analysis, resulting in a much more successful product.
-
- Not studying the past and learning from our mistakes is like riding a
- merry-go-round -- we end up going round and round in circles without really
- getting anywhere.
-
- Prof. Nancy Leveson
- UCI and Univ. of Washington
-
-
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