ITERATIVE INNOVATION
and money to outsource, customers can accelerate their development schedules.
WIN-T’s EMC2 project, also known as the “command post in the sky,” fea- tured a C-17 aircraft integrated with full network and mission command capabilities—from takeoff to jump—to give paratroopers and their commanders reachback to their home station and eyes on the destination. Tese critical systems required protection from the powerful vibrations and aerodynamic forces that occur during a cargo aircraft’s flight. In addition, the communications equip- ment could not produce electromagnetic interference with other command-and- control or airplane systems, yet still had to be light enough to meet a four-man weight-lift limit per military standards.
GOT YOUR BACK
CERDEC is building an apparatus to test the Energy Harvesting Assault Pack, a Soldier-wearable intelligent power manager that would power situational awareness capabilities such as GPS and Nett Warrior. The WaTTS/LKEH test apparatus will simulate Soldier movements in a range of environments and at different positions and speeds. (Photo courtesy of CERDEC)
the effort for CERDEC and leveraged its PIF to complete the requirements.
WIN-T and the PIF reside at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, enabling WIN-T project staff to maintain eyes-on status of their prototype during each phase of the process and allowing for course correc- tions prior to establishing requirements.
At the end of any PIF engagement, cus- tomers such as WIN-T generally produce a small number of fielded products to help prove the concept, and then either help customers transition the product
86 Army AL&T Magazine
to an Army depot or provide a technical data package that the customer can use to solicit production from industry. In either case, by integrating the prototype up front, the technology is more mature and less susceptible to major redesign, saving both time and money.
ACCELERATING SCHEDULE Typically, when a product manager orga- nization leads and manages its customer’s product development effort, it often out- sources the specific product engineering work. However, by
engaging directly with a PIF rather than spending the time October-December 2015
CERDEC PIF engineers designed pro- totypes for ruggedized transit cases to house the systems and a modular work- station to provide a flexible workspace for the Soldiers. Seemingly small fabrications can make the difference in a product’s success or failure, and the key to rugged- izing the cases came down to creating specialized brackets to connect the cases to the racks. PIF engineers created plastic versions of the brackets on a 3-D printer to rapidly evaluate design revisions rather than expending valuable metal fabrica- tion time for each revision. Te design also allowed easy access to the equipment inside the cases and, most importantly, special filters integrated inside the cases blocked electromagnetic interference.
For the workstation design, CERDEC PIF engineers fabricated a modular apparatus that is configurable for up to seven users, provides power and Inter- net connections and ties securely to the C-17 floor—yet collapses to cre- ate a clear exit path for paratroopers to facilitate their jumps. PIF engineers
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