The Space Quality Improvement Council

Gary Schipper

The national security space community has embraced cooperation and collective action as the best way to meet the mission assurance challenges faced by all.

In the late 1990s, a rash of satellite and launch vehicle anomalies severely curtailed national space system capabilities. A concerned Congress and Department of Defense initiated a Broad Area Review of the U.S. space industry, which found that shortfalls in contractor engineering and quality practices, along with U.S. Government emphasis on cost and schedule over mission success, were largely responsible for the loss of critical space assets. As part of a comprehensive effort to get the industry back on track, Aerospace began investigating ways to put into practice a renewed emphasis on mission success (see sidebar, A Savvy Consumer). One key element that needed to be addressed was reluctance and, in many cases, inability within the contractor community to share information, discuss common concerns, and work together to resolve industry-wide difficulties. Also lacking was a way for consensus perspectives and recommendations of the contractor community to reach national security space leadership.

As an objective third party, Aerospace was in a unique position to orchestrate such a dialog and forum for action among the contractors themselves and between the contractors and key government personnel. To that end, Aerospace established the Space Quality Improvement Council (SQIC) in 2001, an industry forum dedicated to identifying and collaboratively solving systemic problems across the design, development, deployment, operation, and acquisition of national space systems. The contractor community was quick to embrace the idea, understanding that a failure for anyone is a problem for everyone, affecting the technical decisions, risk profiles, scheduling, and cost structure of every other program in development. Moreover, by speaking with a unified voice, contractors would be better positioned to make policy recommendations that would improve the business environment while serving the broader interests of national security. The SQIC provides a unique and effective means for contractor cooperation and contractor-customer communication and action.

Charter and Composition

SQIC membership is composed of The Aerospace Corporation and executive-level mission assurance and engineering leadership from ATK, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boeing, General Dynamics, ITT, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Orbital Sciences Corp., Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon, Space Systems/Loral, and United Launch Alliance. The SQIC is cosponsored by Lt. Gen. Michael A. Hamel, Commander, Space and Missile Systems Center, USAF Space Command; Lt. Gen. Henry A. "Trey" Obering III, Director, Missile Defense Agency; Maj. Gen. James B. Armor Jr., Director, National Security Space Office; Brig. Gen. Edward L. Bolton Jr., Deputy Director, Systems Integration and Engineering, National Reconnaissance Office; and Bryan D. O'Connor, Chief Safety and Mission Assurance Officer, NASA. As the sole FFRDC on the roster, Aerospace serves as a member, impartial host, and intermediary for the government and contractors.

The SQIC operates as a nonattributive body, where perspectives and recommendations for improvement are carried forward to the cosponsors as representing the industry consensus, and initiatives of the SQIC are executed cooperatively by all. Though competitors for government contracts, SQIC members have recognized that raising the caliber of national space programs through cooperation benefits the industry as a whole. And this collective drive toward risk reduction and elevated mission assurance has been recognized by the SQIC's cosponsors, who regard the council as an efficient, institutionalized, trusted means for bringing industry contributions directly into their program and acquisition decisions.

A Space Quality Improvement Council meeting held in June, 2007, at The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California. The group of aerospace industry leaders is dedicated to identifying and collaboratively solving issues faced by a variety of stakeholders in the national security space community.

SQIC members meet approximately twice per year, with additional subgroup and special-topic technical meetings as needed. These biannual meetings proceed in two parts. The morning begins with a closed session for contractors only. This is followed in the afternoon by the sponsor forum, in which consensus perspectives and recommendations from the morning's session are presented to the SQIC cosponsors without attribution, and action plans are discussed and formalized. This two-part format allows open discussion of problems and lessons learned among the contractors, including highly informative failure reviews and proprietary information that may be germane to resolving problems but inappropriate to disclose out of program context to government customers. Additionally, it allows open discussion of areas where the contractors believe that government acquisition and management practices may be complicit in the issues and problems being addressed. It has proven extremely valuable—ultimately essential—for SQIC discussions to include direct and informed critique of the government's role alongside the contractors' own challenges. This enables the group to resolve action plans and implement initiatives to address mission assurance and program executability shortfalls head-on.

Major Initiatives

While the meetings provide a focal point for the SQIC, the most significant work continues year-round. Some of the key initiatives that the SQIC has undertaken include the prioritization of specifications and standards for reimplementation as compliance documents on national security space programs; creation of a mission assurance best practices symposium; comparative analysis of quality assurance approaches; creation of the Supplier Quality Initiative to address quality and subcontract management shortfalls in the space system supply chain; drafting of a memorandum of understanding for critical data-sharing during anomaly-investigation lockdowns; dissemination of critical technology industrial-base reports identifying root causes and improvement opportunities to ensure the viability of the domestic space supply chain; examination of technology transition alternatives for critical space technologies; studies of workforce and resource limitations; coordinated vetting of new and updated specifications and standards slated for government implementation; a study of counterfeit parts; and the definition of uniform subcontractor requirements and assessment criteria. These are not small undertakings nor candidates for easy resolution, yet all significantly relate to the health and continuous improvement of mission assurance across national space programs.

One of the more significant initiatives of the SQIC has been the creation of the National Security Space Advisory Forum (NSSAF). In 2003, a SQIC study investigated the use of lessons-learned repositories, shared failure data and anomaly resources, and the use of such data sources in conjunction with system engineering and anomaly investigation processes within the contractor community. This study revealed a clear need for an early warning anomaly and alert system for problems affecting spacecraft, payload, launch, and ground systems at the part, material, and system levels. Existing industry-wide problem-alert resources were not supporting the specialized nature, proprietary controls, and timeliness required to identify and remedy potentially systemic problems early in a space system's development cycle, resulting in costly late-term fixes or irrecoverable on-orbit anomalies. The SQIC created and implemented the NSSAF by means of a secure, Web-based resource specifically developed for sharing critical space-system anomaly data and problem alerts. It was designed to complement and augment the Government-Industry Data Exchange Program (GIDEP), a general program for the exchange of technical information and data (particularly failure data and corrective actions) between diverse government agencies and participating contractors. The NSSAF allows space industry contractors to share information about parts problems, test results, failure investigations, system and subsystem anomalies, and lessons learned in a controlled environment. It became fully operational in September 2005 and is in use by all SQIC member organizations. In its first four months, it proved instrumental in facilitating the secure exchange of highly technical failure data associated with a critical space system part, enabling an immediate, coordinated, and successful risk assessment before the imminent launch of a national space asset. Aerospace directs and administers the NSSAF and helps the contractor community investigate and resolve technical and operational anomalies as they are identified.

Cooperation and Community

The SQIC has also become a valuable point of origin for collaborative technical investigations involving systemic anomalies that may affect multiple programs, contractors, and customers. The trusted relationships among SQIC members have proven an invaluable element in the rapid, targeted exchange of failure and anomaly data critical to the investigation and resolution of root cause and potential impacts. Some recent investigations have been pursued via the SQIC body as a whole, while others simply exploit the executive-level relationships and expert communities represented among the SQIC membership: launch vehicles and propulsion systems, satellites and interplanetary vehicles, ground and communication systems, and payloads and hardware for remote sensing, navigation, meteorology, and space-based communications.

This was a key objective of the SQIC from the outset: to strengthen the trust and cooperative spirit among the national space contractor community. Another goal was to harmonize the objectives, practices, and acquisition policies of space system customers, principally the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, National Reconnaissance Office, Missile Defense Agency, and NASA. While each has its own processes for ensuring the success of acquired and deployed systems, there has been, in the past, little cross-fertilization of best practices or any effort to derive an optimal and uniform acquisition model. And while the SQIC is neither resourced nor chartered to realize this grand goal, bringing the largely common contractor body together with the different customers has made it easier to address global shortfalls in acquisition practice and policy and has elevated awareness in the benefits of uniform processes. Nothing has demonstrated this better than the reimplementation of specifications and standards to the acquisition baseline. Having a common set—or at least a common core set—of specifications and standards between customers can lead to tremendous cost savings through repeatability of design and development processes at contractors. And this, in turn, raises confidence in those processes because they don't have to be reexamined and reinvented for each customer and program. Steps taken via the SQIC to prioritize uniform compliance specifications and standards for all space systems and customers has set a valuable and successful example for broader multiagency space acquisition practices.

In the past year, the scope of the SQIC has broadened still further through two spinoffs. The first, the National Space Supplier Council, was established by the National Security Space Office to approach industrial base issues with third- and fourth-tier suppliers. The second, the SQIC Science and Technology Sub-Council, was created to improve technology transition processes and funding unique to national space system development and acquisition.

Conclusion

The SQIC has continued to grow in relevance, effectiveness, participation, and recognition, even though no SQIC meeting, issue, or initiative is ever centered around success or a job well done. The premise of the SQIC has been that, given the right implementation, participants, and objectives—along with the honest willingness to share shortfalls and contribute best practices—a larger objective of sustaining and furthering the mission assurance priorities of national space systems can be achieved, even if it means the sharp examination of what's wrong, what can be improved, and what can be accomplished together to recover from past problems and share lessons that need to be learned.

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