Description
The purpose of this activity is to address the procurement process of the payload parts, equipment and larger sub-systems (such as antennas or repeaters) such as to allow a leaner process, that should lead to procurement cost reduction, procurement delay reduction, without putting at stake the quality of the final delivered product. A first solution that can be envisaged is for instance the design of equipment that can operate over a large bandwidth range (generic design) and that can be tuned during mounting, etc. Another solution could be the management of bulk procurements by several prime manufacturers, maintaining a flow of procured devices. The analysis of the supply chain and dependencies is also an important element. The approach should follow as a minimum the following steps: (1) Definition of market segmentation classes based on the analysis of the anticipated evolution of the market (2) Review of payload product catalogues implementing the different identified payloads and identification of sources for potential cost savings that could be generated from generic feature of equipment or flexibility in the design of on board equipment (3) Review of methods in procurements, qualification, testing, that could further contribute to the cost (and associated metrics) of equipment and payload sub-systems (4) Quantitative assessment of the proposed methods against the reference scenarios and catalogues (5) Review of the conclusions with the procurement authorities and quality managers in various recognised organisations (equipment suppliers, prime manufacturers, satellite operators, agencies) and analysis of the acceptability of the proposed methods against the potential benefits and associated drawbacks (6) Promotion of conclusions for implementation.