Systems Engineering for Astronomy Projects

Level: Introductory Length: 7 hours Format: In-Person Lecture Intended Audience: Project managers, systems engineers and lead engineers who wish to learn how to develop a system architecture that will deliver the science by deriving, capturing and manage the requirements. Engineers and Project/Instrument scientists who wish to learn more about systems engineering. Undergraduate training in engineering or science is assumed. Description: This course provides an introduction to lean systems engineering for the development of telescopes, facilities and instruments for astronomy. A primary goal of this course is to illustrate how the rigor of the systems engineering process can help us to build better astronomy products more quickly and more affordable by using the concept phase to define the product well and plan the project for success. The course will be exercise-driven, using an example of an actual instrument. During the course we will explore the various analysis methods that can be used to derive functional and performance requirements of an astronomical instrument. Participants will also learn how to write correct, clear, and concise requirements. This will be followed by working through an example to show the interaction between allocations and performance estimations. The course will conclude with a session on how to plan the project based on the product breakdown structure developed during the course. Learning Outcomes: This course will enable you to: - develop user (science) requirements for astronomical facilities and systems - analyze science requirements and perform a functional analysis - implement functions, prepare concept solutions, and develop system architecture - capture and derive functional performance and other requirements - show the path to final acceptance during manufacturing, assembly, integration and system verification testing - describe product breakdown structure-based project planning Instructor(s) Hermine Schnetler has been a Systems Engineer for more than 25 years, initially working in the Defence industry on products such as inertial navigation systems for aircraft, helmet sighting systems and helicopter mounted sighting systems. She has joined the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) twelve years ago and is the Head of Group: Systems Engineering. She tailored and successfully introduced systems engineering for astronomy and was also involved in a number of instrument studies. Currently Dr. Schnetler is the systems engineer for the HARMONI Integral Field Spectrograph, one of the first light instruments for the European Extremely Large Telescope and until recently she was also the lead systems engineer for the Low Frequency Aperture Array which is one of the critical systems for the Square Kilometre Array Low Telescope. She has a first degree in Electronics Engineering and an MSc in Systems Engineering. Both of these were obtained from the University of Pretoria in South Africa. She followed this with a PhD in Software Engineering from Cranfield University, UK. Dr Schnetler is a member of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), a member of the Institute for Engineering Technology and SPIE. Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2018 Course Held: 13 June 2018