Speaker
Description
Together with Ariane 6 & P120C major industrialists, ESA identified a set of improvements with relevant cost assessment.
The principal purpose of the activities is to reduce the costs required to manufacture Ariane 6 and furthermore to increase sustainability. In the longer term, ESA’s contribution to, and management of, the Process Improvement activities are of the utmost importance so as to enable synergies and provide a frame for the optimisation of the Ariane 6 supply chain. Modernisation of the launcher manufacturing means through Process Improvement, will support the following European space industrial priorities:
- Intelligent automation,
- Predictive maintenance,
- Asset sensors implementation.
These activities enable and are a precursor to a fully robotised and intelligent value chain end-to-end. Three major achievements for the activities have been defined:
Achievement 1: to reduce manufacturing cost.
For a given process the current man hours and material costs are measured. The industrialist assesses a percentage of manufacturing cost reduction, resulting in an estimated cost reduction. It is expected to be achieved as from the manufacturing of the sixteenth shipset onwards.
Achievement 2: to reduce lead time.
For a given process the industrialist will reduce the process time, by reducing labour and machine hours. Thus, optimising the use of labour, assets and energy resources. The current process time is measured and will be monitored against the envisaged process time reduction.
Achievement 3: to reduce environmental impact.
The environmental impact of the European Launcher product will be reduced through the introduction of more sustainable processes (eco-design approach). As the activities are directly contracted by ESA to the industrialist, the Agency has visibility on the current process, the improved one, and the associated environmental assessments. ESA proposes a process for the companies to assess and monitor the environmental impact of their manufacturing processes. This approach follows the reference set by ESA in ESSB-HB-U005 Space System Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) guidelines, and it is split into the following steps:
- Identification of the steps in the process affected by the process improvement activity to be implemented. The general process flow proposed in the ESA LCA Questionnaire developed by the Clean Space Office is proposed as a basis for this evaluation.
- Provide a baseline scenario per activity: environmental impact of the current process.
- Provide an assessment of how the Contractor expects to reduce the environmental impact of its process through process improvement. In this step, the Contractor shall indicate which is the environmental impact mitigation measurements contained in each Process Improvement activities.
- Provide a resulting scenario per activity: environmental impact of the proposed process after the implementation of the Process Improvement activity.
This third achievement will be presented at the Clean Space Industry Days 2023.
It constitutes an innovative approach aiming at evaluating the environmental impact of Launch System Ground Segment applying similar concepts and methodology to those used for product LCA. The approach will first concentrate on Global Warming impact and energy consumption. The Agency gives the flexibility to the industrialist to propose additional parameters depending on the assessed perimeter.
A pilot case with a major Ariane 6 industrialist is already ongoing. Among the key gains from the activities identified for the Pilot Case, the team is already observing: reduction of internal and external logistic effort, reduction of necessary reworks, replacement of environmental unfriendly & hazardous processes, and reduction of energy consumption – all these factors affecting the environmental impact of the currently standing processes.
This approach sets the reduction of environmental impact as a priority for D/STS in one of its main Programmes.
