Advanced design for quality avionic systems: a new roadmap for systems development

With respect to avionics systems, traditional design and manufacturing processes have proven themselves to be inadequate when it comes to meeting the new realities of the defense market place. Maintaining performance superiority in the face of today's reduced budgets and manpower requires new and disciplined processes, lower costs, shorter development cycles, and products that successfully balance performance, supportability, and cost. A team of Air Force, McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, and Hughes Aircraft Company personnel have developed and are implementing a new avionics design and development process that satisfies these demands. The process is called Advanced Design for Quality Avionic Systems (ADQAS). It includes well defined steps and a guide or roadmap to direct the efforts of integrated Product Development (IPD) teams in designing and manufacturing avionics products. The reams tailor their processes to the product and measure progress against predetermined exit criteria for each phase. Equipment design simultaneously stresses the capability for long term operation in the user's environment, and the minimization of variability through the control of manufacturing processes. The product development, verification, and production phases continue the focus on careful verification of product and process attributes and on variability reduction. Implementation of the ADQAS process has already begun on several F-15 development programs, which are referenced in this paper.<>