BOEING

FLIGHT
TESTING

Kelly Kimberling
Kelsey LaRoche
Tyde Sirk
Michael Ulmen
TEAM INPUT &
CONFLICTS
Only one person can work on the model at once
Weekly time spent on project was over 18 people
hours
Email good source of communication
PROBLEM
DESCRIPTION
Estimating testing time with given resources is
problematic
What is the probability of finishing the certification
tests by a given date with given resources
What is the time between gates
This helps to find finish time after major delays
OBJECTIVE
Estimate two kinds of variability
Resource skill level
Failures/Delays/Visits from Murphy during testing
METHOD
Discrete event simulation in conjunction with
Monte Carlo simulation using the simulation
software Arena
Based on business rules
Many iterations with variation in each test
Allows visualization of the process with animation
Able to see what resources are spending the most
time at ????
ASSUMPTIONS
Three people per team
Skill levels and pay are known and vary

Testing is planned to the individual level

Adequate fleet size to do all testing and/or

multiple tests to a plane in parallel
Order/schedule of tests

Chances and distributions

Skill Distribution: 90/100/110

PARTS OF MODEL
We will have shortcuts to each major part of the
model
FLIGHT VS. GROUND
TESTS
Flight tests have a set time but can be delayed for
weather and ground prep delays
Ground tests have variable times based on
resource skills and availability and what was
discovered during testing
RESOURCE TEAMS
Tests are performed by teams but we allocate
individual tasks
Each team has members with different skill
levels
System pulls workers
Fastest to slowest
Selected on preferred order based on speed of worker and

availability
Could be pulled by some attribute/variable such as cost

relative to speed
FAILURES
Major delays to the project
Redesigns
% chance that varies each time
Minor delays to the project
Weather delays
Over allocated resources
Resource shortage
OUTCOMES
How long will it take, not as point estimate, but
as confidence interval and probability
25 Workers
Fastest workers total hours:
Medium speed workers total hours:
Slowest workers total hours:
Labor Costs
Duration of process

Utilization
DELAYS
In-air flight testing is go/no-go
Weather delays can prevent a test
% chance to delay a flight test due to weather
Changes with each test and iteration
Test duration is constant
While plane is waiting for concurrent tasks to finish
GATES
Milestones
Record date reached
Helps find major risk of delay
IMPACT ON
STAKEHOLDERS
If model is used
Customers can get a more realistic time frame on
when to expect their planes
Boeing has a better idea knowing how long flight
testing will take and expected costs (95% confidence
interval)
Boeing will know how many workers they will need to
complete a process in a more effective manner
Can put more workers at other tasks to speed up process