IDC STUDY PROCESS

• The first step in scheduling one of the IDC facilities for a study is to contact Liz Matson, the IDC Manager, (757.824.1468) to request support. This should be done one to two months prior to desired time for the study session to begin.
• Initial discussions will:

• Help us determine how the IDC can best serve your needs.
• Identify your mission/instrument, the type and scope of support desired, and the time frame in which the support is needed.
• Confirm the availability of the lab(s) for your study.

• Planning meetings take place with the customer team approximately four to six weeks before the study so that the IDC team can learn about the work required. The IDC Management representatives, Lab Lead, Systems Engineer and other engineers meet with the customer team to form a preliminary idea of studies activities.

• Customers should provide a relatively detailed description of the mission or instrument with supporting charts, pictures, and related materials. The customer team will describe in detail the IDC work required and identify any complex/difficult issues.

• Customer expectations are discussed and defined.

• One to three days prior to the start of the study, a pre-work meeting is held so that the customer team can meet the entire cadre of discipline engineers assigned to their study.

• The IDC Discipline Engineering Team works and formulates a convergent mission or instrument concept for approximately five days.

• Typical MDL design activities include the generation and sub-allocation of derived requirements, the identification and execution of trade studies, the development of mission system and subsystem architectures, the selection of components, the structural/mechanical layout and component placement, the identification of risk areas and future trades, and the documentation of results.

• Typical IDL activities include: the generation and sub-allocation of derived requirements, the identification and execution of trade studies, the development of instrument architectures, the selection of components, the structural/mechanical layout and component replacement, the identification of risk areas and future trades, and the documentation and presentation of the study results.

• Design activity is culminated in briefing the study results to the customer team on the last day of the study. Action items are identified/tracked during this briefing and are closed out with the delivery of the final product.

• The IDC final product is a body of information that includes the study objective and the study results as well as the rationale and technical data behind the concepts generated and the resulting associated risks. Customers can expect to receive their final product three to four weeks after the study.

• Customer feedback is an integral part of the IDC process. The value of our products is well-recognized and demonstrated by the feedback we receive as well as through the high customer return rate that we experience. We encourage our customers to contact us to evaluate the opportunities for subsequent support.