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Marshall Space Flight Center Propulsion Systems Department (PSD) KM InitiativeNASA Marshall Space Flight Center s Propulsion Systems Department (PSD) is four months into a fifteen month Knowledge Management (KM) initiative to support enhanced engineering decision making and analyses, faster resolution of anomalies (near-term) and effective, efficient knowledge infused engineering processes, reduced knowledge attrition, and reduced anomaly occurrences (long-term). The near-term objective of this initiative is developing a KM Pilot project, within the context of a 3-5 year KM strategy, to introduce and evaluate the use of KM within PSD. An internal NASA/MSFC PSD KM team was established early in project formulation to maintain a practitioner, user-centric focus throughout the conceptual development, planning and deployment of KM technologies and capabilities with in the PSD. The PSD internal team is supported by the University of Alabama's Aging Infrastructure Systems Center Of Excellence (AISCE), Intergraph Corporation, and The Knowledge Institute. The principle product of the initial four month effort has been strategic planning of PSD KM implementation by first determining the "as is" state of KM capabilities and developing, planning and documenting the roadmap to achieve the desired "to be" state. Activities undertaken to support the planning phase have included data gathering; cultural surveys, group work-sessions, interviews, documentation review, and independent research. Assessments and analyses have been performed including industry benchmarking, related local and Agency initiatives, specific tools and techniques used and strategies for leveraging existing resources, people and technology to achieve common KM goals. Key findings captured in the PSD KM Strategic Plan include the system vision, purpose, stakeholders, prioritized strategic objectives mapped to the top ten practitioner needs and analysis of current resource usage. Opportunities identified from research, analyses, cultural/KM surveys and practitioner interviews include: executive and senior management sponsorship, KM awareness, promotion and training, cultural change management, process improvement, leveraging existing resources and new innovative technologies to align with other NASA KM initiatives (convergence: the big picture). To enable results based incremental implementation and future growth of the KM initiative, key performance measures have been identified including stakeholder value, system utility, learning and growth (knowledge capture, sharing, reduced anomaly recurrence), cultural change, process improvement and return-on-investment. The next steps for the initial implementation spiral (focused on SSME Turbomachinery) have been identified, largely based on the organization and compilation of summary level engineering process models, data capture matrices, functional models and conceptual-level systems architecture. Key elements include detailed KM requirements definition, KM technology architecture assessment, evaluation and selection, deployable KM Pilot design, development, implementation and evaluation, and justifying full implementation (estimated Return-on-Investment). Features identified for the notional system architecture include the knowledge presentation layer (and its components), knowledge network layer (and its components), knowledge storage layer (and its components), User Interface and capabilities. This paper provides a snapshot of the progress to date, the near term planning for deploying the KM pilot project and a forward look at results based growth of KM capabilities with-in the MSFC PSD.
Document ID
20060017028
Acquisition Source
Marshall Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Caraccioli, Paul
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Varnadoe, Tom
McCarter, Mike
(Intergraph Corp. Huntsville, AL, United States)
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2006
Subject Category
Spacecraft Propulsion And Power
Meeting Information
Meeting: Managing Knowledge for Successful Mission Operations
Location: Houston, TX
Country: United States
Start Date: March 2, 2006
End Date: March 3, 2006
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNM05AA44G
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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