Tag Archive for: avionics

As in the majority of industries today, the complexity of avionics products is rapidly expanding. In contrast, budgets and development schedules are shrinking as teams work to ensure that product safety remains the first priority.

To help Jama’s avionics customers develop safe, quality products on expedited timelines, we’ve teamed up with the safety-critical experts at AFuzion. The result is our Avionics Services offering, which provides teams with an out-of-the-box configuration of Jama Connect specifically tailored for avionics development along with customized training and documentation templates.

Given the forward-thinking nature of our avionics customers, we knew we needed a trusted partner and thought leader to put together this comprehensive package. With offices in New York and Los Angeles, as well as more around the world, AFuzion offers safety-critical certification and consulting for innovators on the cutting edge of avionics, in addition to training and workshops.

Vance Hilderman, CEO and cofounder of AFuzion, calls his team “senior aviation and safety-critical engineers with an average of 20-plus years of engineering experience – plenty of gray hair and hopefully gray matter.”

We spoke with Hilderman to learn more about how Jama Connect customers can leverage AFuzion’s services to develop stronger avionics products.

Q: Can you talk briefly talk about AFuzion, the industries you serve, and the value you offer your customers?

A: Most of our work is aviation, but we also do automotive, satellites, ground systems, spacecraft, missiles, civil aircraft, and military aircraft. Our engineers have worked with 95 of the world’s 100 largest aviation companies. Though most of our work is engineering development, we also do certification, mentoring, and training. Interestingly, we’ve trained 22,000 engineers in aviation development standards, which is more than all 30 of our competitors combined. We also have a large library of safety-critical whitepapers, all developed by us.

Q: Why is requirements management a central concern for your customers?

A: AFuzion teaches that good requirements and good requirements management are key to avoiding erroneous assumptions and creating project success. Project success is created, planned, executed, and measured. You need great tools for that, and such is our reason for standardizing on Jama Connect.

What are examples of weak, satisfactory, and great avionics requirements? Learn more in our white paper, “Aviation Requirements for Airborne & Ground-Based Software/Hardware.”

Q: What AFuzion solutions or services are currently available with Jama, and what benefits do they deliver for our customers?

A: AFuzion’s safety-critical checklists and templates are hugely popular, especially for aviation. Companies get a working solution out of the box and can avoid rework and delays – it’s a huge jump-start to success, especially when used in conjunction with Jama Connect. And AFuzion can provide standards training while Jama provides the corresponding requirements management training. For the clients, it’s a win-win-win.

Q: What’s the best way to leverage Jama to comply with DO-178, DO-254, and ISO 26262 or IEC-61508?

A: First, get training in requirements management from Jama and the relevant standard from AFuzion. Then initiate Jama deployment and AFuzion’s processes and templates. Consider a gap analysis from AFuzion to show how to best minimize rework and optimize successful project certification and compliance.

Q: What are some of the biggest mistakes or misconceptions you see avionics professionals make when they’re first starting to develop safety-critical products?

A: One: Proceeding without a written plan and alternatives. Two: Outsourcing. Engineering is incredibly complex already and it helps when you are all in the same room, same time zone, and speaking the same language. Outsourcing without a CMMI level 4 compliance playbook increases risk. Now, we don’t mind when companies try that: Over half of our clients come to us after they fail at that. But we’d rather see them reduce costs by succeeding first and avoiding failure.

Q: Are aerospace companies doing their best to keep their products secure? What are the cybersecurity threats facing the aerospace industry?

A: Great question. In fact, the FAA and EASA just escalated cybersecurity to the highest level and mandated that all aviation companies deploy proven solutions based upon DO-326A (ED-202A in Europe) before year-end 2019. AFuzion’s aviation cybersecurity whitepaper is very popular and available for free download at our website.

Companies need training, frameworks, and cybersecurity tools throughout development and product deployment/operations, and AFuzion handles all of this. Our new aviation cybersecurity DO-326A / ED-202A training is proving hugely popular: We just had a sold-out class in Munich during Aerospace Tech Week. Threats are rapidly increasing worldwide, so the solutions need to keep up. AFuzion will help ensure that happens.

Q: What are some success stories you’ve heard from people using AFuzion’s services?

A: In just the past three months, we’ve helped companies certify 20-plus aviation products; taught 1,500 engineers how to succeed with DO-178C, DO-254, and ARP4754A; co-developed 10 aviation airborne- and ground-based systems; and have maintained a 100% client repeat rate, where clients call us back for additional work or say they intend to. That’s honestly the greatest reward. Many people think aerospace is staid and boring. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. Aerospace is real technology, real money, real results.


View our datasheet to learn more about Jama Software’s Avionics Services package. And, to see more information specific to the aerospace and defense industries, we’ve compiled a handy list of valuable resources for you!

 

 

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“The biggest risk is not taking any risk…In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

– Mark Zuckerberg, CEO & Founder of Facebook

Although this is true of many of today’s greatest product innovations and the people behind them, when it comes to aerospace and avionics systems and product development, winning is rarely about taking a huge risk and having it pay-off. In fact, most of the time winning is about building a safe, reliable, working product. (Extra credit is given for products that come in on time, under budget, and exceed your customers’ expectations for usability and durability). Of course, to Mr. Zuckerberg’s well-established point, innovation typically demands some level of risk. The secret lies in taking on only an acceptable amount of risk relative to your design assurance levels.

At Jama Software, we know for certain that the more efficient the requirements management process and the more you can define and approve (reach consensus) requirements upfront, the higher your likelihood of coming in ahead of schedule and under budget – and mitigating those risks. In his new “DO-254 Costs Versus Benefits” whitepaper, Vance Hilderman points out the more assumptions that are minimized, the greater the consistency of requirements and their testability is assured, and iterations and rework due to faulty and missing requirements is greatly reduced. One of the leading causes of project failure is poor requirements management. The benefit of DO-254 is the rigor it adds to your requirements management process, thereby increasing your odds of success.

DO-254 can also help save you time by reducing the number of bugs found during testing. Vance states: “Since DO-254 mandates thorough and testable requirements along with design / implementation reviews, far fewer bugs will occur and the test / fix cycle should be expedited.” Voila! Not only will you have a better functioning product, but you will save time and money as a result of the process.

In our ongoing work with heavily regulated industries like Medical Device / Life Sciences, Aerospace, and Automotive, we often hear companies immediately associating cost with regulation. And although that is true, the benefits far outweigh the cost. One is that the most significant cost escalation across DO-254 DALs occurs between Level C and Level B – the cost for Level B is the same as for Level A. It is important to realize that the most expensive design iteration will be when you initially begin designing towards a standard. As you become more familiar with the regulations and rules, it will become easier, and you will also begin to be able to reuse requirements that are reviewed and approved to fit the standard. In complex, regulated environments an investment in DO-254 is not only strategic, but can maximize time to value and save from costly rework and technical debt.

To read Vance’s whitepaper where he goes in-depth on these ideas and concepts, please download the paper here.

And to learn more about how Jama can help you adhere to and provide traceable proof of adherence to these standards, please start a free 30 day trial today!