Improvement and automation of functional readiness review presentations for an engine program

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to automate the generation of the Functional Readiness Reviews (FRR) presentations for the Pratt & Whitney modeling group’s validation of the State Variable Model for engine control systems. The objectives are to eliminate human error and reduce the time it takes to create the presentation from upwards of 38 hours to 1 hour or less. To achieve these objectives a Value Stream Mapping event was completed. This event led to the development of two different tools, one to generate plots and one to create the final FRR presentation. The first tool was implemented as a script for Unigraph and laid the base for the time reduction in the creation of the FRR presentation by creating separate images for each plot in a standard folder structure with a standard naming convention. The FRR presentation tool was implemented using a combination of Microsoft Excel and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). This tool automated the generation of the PowerPoint Presentation and reduced the time it takes to create the presentation to 10 minutes once the inputs are provided. Key Terms ⎯ Functional Readiness Review, Software Development Lifecycle, Timing Analysis, Value Stream Mapping.