Space Station Furnace Facility Management Information System (SSFF-MIS) Development

This report summarizes the chronology, results, and lessons learned from the development of the SSFF-MIS. This system has been nearly two years in development and has yielded some valuable insights into specialized MIS development. General: In December of 1994, the Camber Corporation and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) were contracted to design, develop, and implement a MIS for Marshall Space Flight Center's Space Station Furnace Facility Project. The system was to be accessible from both EBM-Compatible PC and Macintosh platforms. The system was required to contain data manually entered into the MIS as well as data imported from other MSFC sources. Electronic interfaces were established for each data source and retrieval was to be performed at prescribed time intervals. The SOW requirement that predominantly drove the development software selection was the dual-platform (IBM-PC and Macintosh) requirement. The requirement that the system would be maintained by Government personnel influenced the selection of Commercial Off-the-shelf software because of its inherent stability and readily available documentation and support. Microsoft FoxPro Professional 2.6 for Windows and Macintosh was selected as the development tool. This is a software development tool that has been in use for many years. It is stable and powerful. Microsoft has since released the replacement for this product, Microsoft Visual FoxPro, but at the time of this development, it was only available on the Windows platform. The initial contract included included the requirement for capabilities relating to the Work- and Organizational Breakdown Structures, cost (plan and actuals), workforce (plan and actuals), critical path scheduling, trend analysis, procurements and contracts, interface to manufacturing, Safety and Mission Assurance, risk analysis, and technical performance indicators. It also required full documentation of the system and training of users. During the course of the contract, the requirements for Safety and Mission Assurance interface, risk analysis, and technical performance indicators were deleted. Additional capabilities were added as reflected in the Contract Chronology below. Modification 4 added the requirement for Support Contractor manpower data, the ability to manually input data not imported from non-nal sources, a general 'health' indicator screen, and remote usage. Mod 6 included the ability to change the level of planning of Civil Service Manpower at any time and the ability to manually enter Op Codes in the manufacturing data where such codes were not provided by the EMPACS database. Modification 9 included a number of changes to report contents and formats. Modification 11 required the preparation of a detailed System Design Document.