Boeing Flight Testing

1
Boeing Flight Testing

• Kelly Kimberling
• Kelsey LaRoche
• Tyde Sirk
• Michael Ulmen

2
Team input Conflicts

• Only one person can work on the model at once
• Weekly time spent on project was over 18 people
  hours
• Email good source of communication

3
Problem Description

• Estimating testing time with given resources is
  problematic
• What is the probability of finishing the
  certification tests by a given date with given
  resources
• What is the time between gates
• This helps to find finish time after major delays

4
Objective

• Estimate two kinds of variability
• Resource skill level
• Failures/Delays/Visits from Murphy during testing

5
Method

• Discrete event simulation in conjunction with
  Monte Carlo simulation using the simulation
  software Arena
• Based on business rules
• Many iterations with variation in each test
• Allows visualization of the process with
  animation
• Able to see what resources are spending the most
  time at ????

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Assumptions

• Three people per team
• Skill levels and pay are known and vary
• Testing is planned to the individual level
• Adequate fleet size to do all testing and/or
  multiple tests to a plane in parallel
• Order/schedule of tests
• Chances and distributions
• Skill Distribution 90/100/110

7
Parts of Model

• We will have shortcuts to each major part of the
  model

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Flight vs. ground tests

• Flight tests have a set time but can be delayed
  for weather and ground prep delays
• Ground tests have variable times based on
  resource skills and availability and what was
  discovered during testing

9
Resource teams

• Tests are performed by teams but we allocate
  individual tasks
• Each team has members with different skill levels
• System pulls workers
• Fastest to slowest
• Selected on preferred order based on speed of
  worker and availability
• Could be pulled by some attribute/variable such
  as cost relative to speed

10
Failures

• Major delays to the project
• Redesigns
• chance that varies each time
• Minor delays to the project
• Weather delays
• Over allocated resources
• Resource shortage

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Outcomes

• How long will it take, not as point estimate, but
  as confidence interval and probability
• 25 Workers
• Fastest workers total hours
• Medium speed workers total hours
• Slowest workers total hours
• Labor Costs
• Duration of process
• Utilization

12
Delays

• In-air flight testing is go/no-go
• Weather delays can prevent a test
• chance to delay a flight test due to weather
• Changes with each test and iteration
• Test duration is constant
• While plane is waiting for concurrent tasks to
  finish

13
Gates

• Milestones
• Record date reached
• Helps find major risk of delay

14
Impact on Stakeholders

• If model is used
• Customers can get a more realistic time frame on
  when to expect their planes
• Boeing has a better idea knowing how long flight
  testing will take and expected costs (95
  confidence interval)
• Boeing will know how many workers they will need
  to complete a process in a more effective manner
• Can put more workers at other tasks to speed up
  process