CATENI INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF191-007

Description

Cateni and it's project partner End-to-End Analytics propose to bring tailored elements of advanced commercial supply chain practice to accelerate CubeSat development. In particular, the team will address two major sources of delay --long-lead-time components and payload integration. The goal is to identify the trades between upfront investment, total cost, flexibility and schedule, and ultimately enable the market to offer choices on where to operate in that space depending on priorities and mission needs. The project has three substantive tasks. The first is conducting a CubeSat "Supply Chain Assessment." This includes discussions with CubeSat users/customers/buyers, builders, and component suppliers as well as a review of literature on the market and applications to identify/validate key sources of delay and to explore mitigation strategies. This task will support development of demand scenarios and modeling of CubeSat production and supply chain processes and schedules. The second task is "Modeling and Analysis" provides for developing, updating and exercising analytical models/simulations to assess the potential impacts of various strategic interventions on a set of relevant demand scenarios. It will include assessing the impact of modularity on flexibility and configurability and associated costs. Task 3 will focus on validation. recommendations and Phase II demonstration planning.