Volume 9, Number 4 • July/August 2001 • Small Business/SBIR

Small Business Develops Risk Analysis System

Lumina Decision Systems, a small business located in Los Gatos, California, has jointly developed with NASA a system to analyze the schedule and cost risks in complex projects.

The Schedule and Cost Risk Analysis Modeling (SCRAM) system, based on a version of Lumina’s Analytica® software tool, was developed under a Phase II SBIR contract with NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC). SCRAM was developed in response to NASA’s need to identify the importance of major delays in shuttle ground processing, which is a critical function in project management and process improvement.

Lumina CEO Max Henrion explained that Analytica is marketed as a visual software tool for creating, along with analyzing and communicating quantitative models. It provides an alternative to the spreadsheet, graphical influence diagrams to show qualitative structure of models and intelligent arrays with the power to scale up simple models to handle larger problems. Analytica is available for Windows 95/98/NT 4.0 and the Macintosh operating system. The Enterprise version of Analytica 2.0 adds additional capabilities to link to virtually any database using open database connectivity (ODBC) and to hide sensitive portions of models from end-users with new privacy functionality.

Analytica was used by Resources for the Future (RFF), a nonprofit, non-advocacy research organization in Washington, DC, to facilitate a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) assessment of the “Grand Experiment,” the term used by Congress for the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. The amendments included market-based incentives for electrical utility companies to control their pollutant emissions of precursors to acid rain. To assess, inform and guide U.S. regulatory policies on these emissions, DOE sponsored the development of an integrated model called the Tracking and Analysis Framework (TAF). TAF required the collaborative effort of more than 30 scientists from 11 institutions across the U.S. and numerous state and federal agencies.

Enrich Consulting, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based consulting organization, specializes in customized support systems built with Analytica. Enrich provides high-end analysis, expert solutions with training and ongoing consulting to clients in banking and investments, high technology and telecommunications. Also, a leading decision support consultant, Decision Strategies, Inc., of Cumming, Georgia, used Analytica to develop models in record time, saving a major customer $15 million.

Lumina also offers the Analytica Decision Engine (ADE) to help users employ the decision support power in the user’s custom Windows 95, Windows NT and Web-based applications. When called from the user’s application, ADE can read, modify and evaluate any Analytica-developed model. ADE can also be used to create and save models, which can be reopened by ADE or by Analytica.

The deployment of SCRAM technology could save industries millions of dollars by helping them improve project management processes and identify the best process improvements to reduce bottlenecks and inefficiencies. SCRAM is based on Lumina’s Analytica risk analysis software package. As a part of the SCRAM development, Lumina developed a version of Analytica that can be easily integrated into larger software systems. This capability has been commercialized and has been used in many other developments, including Web-based decision support.

Existing applications of Analytica include strategic planning, R&D management, decision analysis and risk analysis in finance, healthcare, energy, environment, aerospace and telecommunications. Analytica is being used in major corporations, consulting firms, universities and government agencies on six continents.

KSC is responsible for all aspects of space shuttle ground processing, including the testing and checkout of the three major shuttle components: the orbiter, the external tank and the solid rocket boosters. Ground processing is a large-scale, highly complex and technical endeavor that involves coordinated use of a wide range of materials and resources with NASA and contractor personnel. Processing a single shuttle mission from landing to launch is comprised of approximately 1,000 major processing tasks organized around 24 subsystems. About half of these tasks must be completed for every shuttle mission; the others include periodic maintenance and inspection, and tasks to handle special problems and mission-specific processing requirements.

The SCRAM system was designed for application to complex projects where the quantification of the impacts of specific delay categories on overall project risk adds significant value and insights to the project management team. SCRAM methodologies were successfully applied to improve the risk management processes in a large software development project. SCRAM is considered by NASA to be a significant improvement to the state-of-the-art in schedule and cost risk analysis because it allows realistic models of schedule variables (e.g., task lengths) to be built and analyzed. Existing risk analysis tools provide constrained and limited modeling capabilities. Q

For more information, contact Thomas Gould at the Kennedy Space Center, & 321/867-6238, ) Thomas.Gould-1@ksc.nasa.gov Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

NASA Official: Jonathan Root • Web Design: Printing & Design Office, NASA Headquarters • Credits