1. ESA's TEC Directorate Asset Management - Present and Future
AMMW 2018, ALBA Synchrotron
A. Cozzani, C. Miquel España
28/09/2018

2. ESA’s Technical Directorate
The Directorate of Technology, Engineering and Quality (TEC) has as primary goal to ensure enabling technologies are available when new ESA and European missions need them.
TEC laboratories cover all technical disciples required to support the development, qualification, test, launch and flight anomalies investigations.

3. TEC Asset Management Today
Current situation:
TEC has 35 main laboratories (47 main facilities) including 6 main external laboratories.
Different labs have developed their own solution to track their items (excel lists, physical notebooks, human memory, …).
Synergies between the laboratories are based on personal knowledge and, hence, not fully exploited (‘I know that Lab X might have Equipment Y available.’).
TEC run an internal lab review in 2017 to identify improvements of the processes and tools for their operation, maintenance and upgrades/investments.
The review highlighted the need for a new TEC-wide inventory system.
Requirements have been drafted based on existing internal tool (for financial asset management), on a gap analysis of technical inventory lists maintained by TEC labs and on technical IT (SW and HW) inventories.
Requirements need to be consolidated to ensure no major requirement is left out.

4. TEC Laboratory Landscape
Wide variety of user needs
Few items and fields
Many items and fields
... everything in between...

5. Asset Management Expectations
What we expect from our new Asset Management System?
The new harmonized approach shall benefit all the laboratories.
Perceived benefits for all labs early in the deployment.
Implement a digital End to End Assets Management process.
Fostering the synergies among the different labs in sharing existing resources and improving future procurement, maintenance and operation efficiency.
Capability to be the cornerstone for future process optimizations and integrations (financial link, open to outside, …)

6. TEC Roadmap for a new AM system
Survey of existing tools for first assessment of tool capabilities: several suppliers have been considered/consulted.
Strategy for TEC:
Benchmark with similar organizations and internally in ESA.
Consolidate requirements and find a core set of requirements that could be covered by an off-the-shelf solution. Requirements coverage should not lead to customization.
Adopt a tool that can combine technical and financial asset management, ideally linked to esa purchasing system (SAP based).
Decide on cost trade-off: a new solution should be affordable, reduce costs of tools maintenance and reduce users administrative overhead.
Define and run a pilot (part of the Test Centre and Microwave Laboratory).
Decide on procurement and deployment approach.

7. TEC Roadmap for a new AM system
Criteria for deployment strategy.
Agile-phased approach (waterfall approach leads to delay in implementing changes).
Phased approach: deploy gradually to all labs, achieve “local” tangible improvements first for technical use and financial assets administration (establish and measure KPIs).
Motivate the users: if labs can use the tool for their needs (lab operation and maintenance) they will populate it with updated and correct information.
To come after  the tools reviewed so far offer complementary solutions to other TEC needs:
Lab processes workflow management.
Manage labs end-to-end operations (from user request to service/reports delivery and customer feedback), smoothly, from a light (R&D) to a more complex (Testing) approach.
Facilitate logistics and maintenance (e.g. calibration and electrical safety checks).
Book and share facilities TEC Directorate wide.
Monitoring of resources.
An efficient tool will relieve administrative burden
We need the TEC go-ahead to go for the negotiation with the potential suppliers

8. TEC Roadmap for a new AM system

9. Open points Open points: Timeline: we should act fast.
Migration of data: the tools seen so far offer easy importing capabilities from Excel or other formats.
Parallel inventory initiatives in ESA: coordination with other Directorates (ongoing).
Costs: a first assessment of costs of a new tool from different suppliers have been done and seem competitive considering the existing solutions.
Involvement of the labs in the choice is seen as key: we will boost the communication and involvement of the labs on this.
Flexibility: some of the tools seen so far allow for a customizable approach for use of mobile devices, bar-code/QR/RFID tags management, customizable dashboards for the different functions (technicians and engineers, lab managers, line managers, administrators).
Some of the tools allow for a user based interface development (e.g. web interface apps).
Working session with potential suppliers’ experts to define pilot.
General training for the users.
We need the TEC go-ahead to go for the negotiation with the potential suppliers

10. Challenges identified
The following challenges are being faced:
People prefer to keep doing the “old way”.
Communication between labs is still not optimal.
Pull back from “different ways do the same things” to “one way only”.
Benchmarking (internal and external drains time and resources).
Time pressure to define, test and implement changes.

11. Why are we here today?
We understood other organizations faced similar challenges in the past but, some of them are more advanced than us.
We would like to learn your approach to change.
We would like to learn the lessons/mistakes to avoid.
We would like to benchmark with others (light approach).
We would like to consider applying your Best-Practices.
We may learn other experiences of others that will give us good advice on how to tackle other actions (e.g. on common tools for all labs).