NASA’s Procedural Requirement (NPR) 7150.2

Developing test systems for large, complex, multi-use scenarios involves integrating performant, flexible hardware with extensible, user-centric software. Given the complexity and scale of the projects, timelines and budgets must be carefully considered and monitored. Many aerospace companies and US government agencies have codified their lessons learned during test system development in various standards, such as NASA Procedural Requirement (NPR) 7150.2, which is aimed at standardizing the software engineering process. The 7150.2 requirement addresses how to ensure the software’s robustness and the process by which the software is created, with its foundational belief being that the software engineering process is as vital as writing the code itself. Without the proper process, it’s not possible to create the right solution, deliver on time, or deliver on budget.

This makes documentation critical to creating plans and maintaining alignment during all phases of project execution, across all members of your team and partners. Choosing the right documentation tools and creating custom integrations can greatly reduce the hurdles to achieving 7150.2 compliance.

Building Through A.R.T.ful Design

At DMC, we employ an A.R.T.ful engineering philosophy which focuses on Accountability, Reliability, and Traceability in all that we do. An example of this is in our collaboration with Northrop Grumman on the NASA Space Launch System (SLS) Booster Obsolescence Life Extension (BOLE) project, where DMC met and exceeded industry standards processing approximately 100 documents (each with one or more versions) flowed down from Northrop Grumman defining not only the end article’s requirements, but also the process by which the end article must be constructed (7150.2 being one of those documents). The documents were synthesized into our databases, and each requirement catalogued.

DMC created numerous plans and designs in response to these requirements while involving Northrop Grumman in the requirement refinement process. Our team of expert developers created both hardware and software solutions, clearly indicating in code where the solutions met the designs. Before, during, and after development, our team followed quality assurance processes so that the system would be sufficiently tested, keeping a traceable record of results back to requirements.

Putting Principles into Practice

Successfully executing mission-critical ADG applications requires more than just technical skill—it takes a disciplined, process-driven approach centered on Accountability, Reliability, and Traceability. At DMC, we’ve proven through countless successful projects that our engineering philosophy enables us to exceed stringent compliance standards while remaining flexible and collaborative throughout the project lifecycle. In short, as A.R.T.ful engineers, “We say what we do, we do what we say, and we prove that we did it.”

Your success is our mission, learn more about DMC’s Test & Measurement Automation Solutions and contact us for your next project.

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Northrop Grumman (NG), a large-scale defense contractor working with NASA, selected DMC to create the automated electrical production test equipment that will help make sure each booster is qualified for respective Artemis missions. DMC’s previous successes in developing large-scale rocket testing systems for Northrop Grumman played a significant role in giving NG the confidence to choose DMC for this critical test asset, Jesse Batsche, Senior Director of Test & Measurement, noted.

“DMC has successfully developed projects for Northrop Grumman, and the BOLE test system is the next iteration based on that success,” Chris Cilino, Senior Project Engineer on the project, LabVIEW Champion, and Certified LabVIEW Architect, said. “We were honored to be selected by Northrop Grumman because of our design, passion, and completeness of the solution.”

Zak Pearson, a Project Engineer working on the project, agrees that being awarded the contract was based on DMC’s good reputation, earned trust, and demonstrable capabilities expressed through our prior projects with Northrop Grumman.

“DMC’s BOLE test system leverages our robust and capable rocket system aerospace defense testing technologies – including both software and hardware design and infrastructure that we have built up through many prior projects and previous Northrop programs,” Jesse said. “Applying that historical work and experience allows us to build upon an elevated pedestal as we design the NASA BOLE test equipment. And while we’re leveraging a strong platform starting point, we are certainly extending and extrapolating our designs in new and unique ways to meet the demanding requirements of the BOLE EPSE project, where this evolution and customization is an essential aspect of designing specialized, top tier test and quality systems.”

DMC is comprised of Certified TestStand Architects (CTAs), Certified LabVIEW Architects (CLAs), Certified LabVIEW Developers (CLDs), and a LabVIEW Champion. We hold our engineers to high standards at DMC, as evidenced by these certifications.

“This project has very high and rigorous standards for overall quality, compliance, traceability, and documentation,” Jesse said. “This is part and parcel to working on a mission-critical NASA booster system that needs to be flawless and operate for many years, or even many decades to come. DMC is well positioned to apply and, where appropriate, elevate all our existing internal processes, tooling, and operating procedures to execute this project in the manner our customer expects.”

When asked why Northrop Grumman chose DMC, Jamie Sorensen, a Project Management Specialist at DMC, said: “We were very responsive and excited to collaborate to create the best system for them. We weren’t trying to sell them on a particular product or sell them on a certain way. We were just trying to figure out what made sense for what they wanted. I think they felt we were very honest with them but we also liked to have fun – just very good personalities. They also liked that our engineers were very closely involved in everything from the design to the sales process. Most companies normally have a salesperson pitch the final product, and we had all of our engineers go through their designs and be able to speak to it at a very technical level.”

Our ability to analyze and synthesize requirements into a solid design played a significant role in DMC’s selection, according to Chris.

“DMC instilled confidence in the BOLE team because we very carefully listened to and tracked everything that they asked for during our conversations. We showed them how our designs would meet both their technical needs and business needs. This is DMC’s standard process for medium to large-scale projects,” Chris said. “We excel in what I call A.R.T.ful engineering: ART – accountability, reliability, traceability. When we say accountability, we mean can answer ‘why we did what we did.’ By reliability, we mean we create high-quality products that are both technically correct and meet a user’s needs. Said another way, reliability means you can trust us to provide a valuable solution. By traceability, we use project management and development processes that clearly display the evolution of designs and decisions. These three aspects are important for corporations like Northrop Grumman who work on mission-critical projects.”

DMC’s track record developing rocket testing (and other advanced aerospace/defense systems) demonstrates that we have a reliable approach to mission-critical projects. Part of our approach includes selecting the right hardware and software platforms and tooling to meet requirements. In the BOLE solution, DMC selected the NI platform as well as other products from vendors such as Pickering. 

“The NI platform is open, and not only works with other hardware like Pickering switches, but also other software such as Python, .NET, C Sharp, and C++,” Chris said. “While NI’s platform is very capable, its ability to work with other technologies provides DMC flexibility to pick the right tools for each part of the project. That’s where DMC’s tagline of “Smart People. Expert Solutions.” comes into play. When we say the word expert, we mean we can select and/or create the right tool for the job that gives the client what they need, when they need it, and at an appropriate price.” 

We have expertise in developing software that composes diverse hardware into systems that meet many common needs, according to Chris.

“We enable our customers to create sequences of actions to effectively test their devices while monitoring the full test system, including an ongoing log of events and an ongoing log of collected data,” Chris said. “This comprehensive history helps ensure the integrity of test results.”

After all the data is gathered, we synthesize and nicely summarize the results so that our clients can quickly determine what passed, what failed, and if the device under test met their needs. We’ve developed numerous internal technologies over many projects that we will utilize on the BOLE tester, accelerating the time to the solution’s delivery with a high-quality result.

“We have significant experience creating these types of systems yielding a large body of code that, with minor modifications, will meet the customers’ needs. A key element of DMC’s value proposition to a customer is that we can execute complex tasks with high ROI because we’re building on a previously proven code base,” Chris said. “In addition to our own internal tools and technologies, we utilize commercial off-the-shelf technologies (COTS) – like the National Instruments hardware and software platform, further accelerating the solution’s delivery.”

DMC has selected NI LabVIEW for the BOLE project to facilitate these efficient and accelerated delivery and code reuse goals. 

“LabVIEW’s inherent parallelism allows us to quickly create systems that behave like the world. LabVIEW is a graphical, data-flow driven programming language, and is therefore inherently parallel. I can easily write code that executes in parallel, and, it turns out, that’s how the world behaves,” Chris said. “There are many activities occurring at the same time in any test system. For example, most test systems require applying stimuli, measuring responses, and making decisions all in parallel. This parallel activity in other languages is possible but requires additional programming overhead. LabVIEW enables us to write concurrently executing code without additional overhead. LabVIEW’s inherent parallel processing, plus its tight integration with the NI hardware, lets DMC quickly, efficiently, and, therefore, with high value, give our clients what they need.”

In addition to the core system functionality, DMC also places high emphasis on user experience, operational maintainability, and solid/reliable ongoing support as essential ingredients to a complete project lifecycle, according to Zak.

“Focusing on the human aspect of the system, specifically user stories for how individual people would interact with the system, really helps DMC center our own efforts on making people’s lives better and easier and helping them be more effective in their jobs, Zak said. “That’s from both the software and hardware sides. We have really good approaches on the hardware side to save our customers a ton of time and really reduce the manual effort of a lot of the test process.”

DMC cares about the ‘why?,’ and why starts with the specific people using our solution, according to Chris. 

“We pride ourselves on identifying all the stakeholders of a project and then making sure that the solution meets each stakeholder’s needs. This process starts with a persona analysis,” Chris said. “Once we know WHO our solution will serve, we then work with our clients to define WHAT the solution should do, usually expressed in requirements statements. DMC has developed processes and tooling to capture every requirement (aka the “WHAT”). Our engineers translate requirements into designs (aka the “HOW”) and traceably correlate specific designs to each requirement. Designs are broken down into development tasks and traceably correlated back to requirements. Tests are collaboratively developed and traceably correlated back to requirements. At each stage, we traceably correlate our work to requirements that ultimately enable people’s workflows.”

Chris calls this the chain of custody.

“This chain of custody is part of accountability, reliability, and traceability (A.R.T.-ful engineering) and instills confidence in clients that we can and will meet their needs, Chris said. “It all boils down to trust. The Northrop Grumman team presented us with a large set of requirements, and we’re telling them we can create a solution that meets their needs. We’ve earned their trust because of the systems we’ve put in place, the quality of our designs, and the quality of our people. Our systems enable us to tackle these complex, mission-critical applications.”

This project represents an exciting challenge for the DMC team.

“I am very excited. I think this is one of the coolest projects I’ve gotten to be involved in. It’s always been a dream to work on something related to the space industry, specifically, human space flight. Being a part of that mission, being a part of NASA, and helping to support that is very cool. Having the opportunity to be, however small the contribution, a part of the process to getting humans back to the Moon and to Mars is cool to be involved with,” Zak said. “Our contribution is really cool because it’s at this system level; we are dealing with the whole booster avionics system, so we can say we helped test the whole thing. We will know how the whole thing works together, and we are kind of given the final go or no go for that rocket. I think it’s a cool way to contribute, and I am thrilled we get the opportunity to do so.”

The BOLE opportunity fulfills many DMCers dreams to work on impactful projects related to aerospace and defense.

“My participation in the BOLE project fulfills a lifelong dream to somehow, someway, be involved in the space program. Space has always inspired me,” Chris said. “Now, with DMC, I get the chance to fulfill that lifelong dream. This project is impactful. There is personal fulfillment for me at DMC.”

The project provides personal fulfillment and growth to DMCers and DMC as a whole. 

“I’m excited to continue growing in this sector. This is one of the largest projects we have done,” Jamie said. “This is also a giant step for us in terms of expanding our aerospace and defense capabilities, and I think it’s a great opportunity.”

Everybody on the team is more excited about this project than almost any other that we have had the chance to work on, according to Jesse.

“It’s very cool just to be able to do our part for this grand engineering challenge — supporting the SLS program and Artemis missions and verifying the boosters that are going to bring both crew and cargo up to the Moon and Mars,” Jesse said. “It’s definitely going to be a marquee project that demonstrates the type of engineering contribution DMC is able to make to our customers and to the world.”

Learn more about DMC’s Industries Served and contact us today for your next project.

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Customization and Flexibility

In the article, Ryan outlines how DMC’s solution offers the client both customization specific to its process and business needs as well as flexibility in managing test systems and data. 

DMC designed a four-step approach that leverages SystemLink’s data management tools to accomplish the client’s goals. DMC wrote a custom LabVIEW application to gather high-speed test data from several remote NI devices and push it to a SysemLink server to securely store all of the data. SystemLink provides multiuser remote access and the ability to search, analyze, and display the data.  

The old data storage infrastructure was quickly updated into a server-based infrastructure that easily updates data management. Using the test executive and SystemLink integration, DMC’s solution system provides a central location for data and the tools to manage and analyze it.

SystemLink Specialty

As a National Instruments SystemLink Specialty Alliance Partner, DMC is recognized for proven expertise with specific NI product platforms. 

Our clients use SystemLink software to manage tasks like software deployment, health and test monitoring, data configuration, and data management and visualization. Its open architecture works with other NI products and can incorporate third-party software and hardware. This flexibility allows NI partners to develop custom solutions offering distributed systems management.

For a detailed exploration of DMC’s solution, read the full article on Control Engineering.

Learn more about DMC’s SystemLink expertise and National Instruments partnership.

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Why spend your valuable time on trivial activities? SystemLink enables teams to reduce time spent on cumbersome tasks, freeing up those key personnel to focus on more valuable activities. It also provides new levels of data analysis and visibility across your teams. This helps you get the right insight in less time to make decisions for your goals.

SystemLink Enterprise

A key feature of SystemLink’s enterprise version is the ability to bridge multiple departments in an organization improving overall efficiency. According to a statement by National Instruments, “By standardizing the way data is shared and analyzed, the new enterprise version enables increased visibility and control of test systems across an entire organization.”

SystemLink’s capabilities seek to empower engineers, “Freeing up engineers to focus on the work that has the largest impact for their organization is smart business,” said Josh Mueller, VP of Experience at NI. 

SystemLink Benefits

At DMC, we’ve seen the benefits of using SystemLink including having the ability to give access to the right people with the right data. We also appreciate the ability to share insights further across your organization.

A few examples of SystemLink benefits include:

• Automating the process of updating software to numerous test systems.
• Automating the often tedious process of pouring through data in spreadsheets to analyze, and making results available to the entire team immediately.

SystemLink Features

Some of SystemLink’s exciting new features include customizations to improve the user experience and deployment. 

• Create a role and assign privileges to the role to customize how users can interact with each SystemLink application and service.
• Create custom experiences for each type of user on the server by specifying which role a user has and which workspaces the user can access.
• Create a state to deploy the same system image and set of packages to multiple systems.
• A state is any set of packages installed on a system. After you define a state, you can apply it to other systems to more quickly deploy packages to multiple systems.

DMC and SystemLink

As a SystemLink specialty partner, DMC is using SystemLink to help customers with their systems and testing. Reach out to hear about how this can be useful to your team.

“SystemLink is empowering teams with benefits beyond the traditional focus of testing,” said Project Director Darren Jones. “It ensures systems and assets are healthy, it provides insight with web-based test monitoring, and it gives power to data with enterprise-level analysis and reporting.”

Learn more about DMC’s partnership with National Instruments. 

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