A Technology Readiness Level (TRL) Management using the Systems Engineering Tool for the Space Launch Vehicle

The KSLV-II project with high difficulties technically requires thorough technical management during long-term life cycle more than 10 years for launching into space. The TRL is a quantitative indicator developed by NASA widely used all over the world to measure technology maturity of a system development objectively and consistently. The TRL is also used to make sure technology level and to establish a future direction in the KSLV-II project. The TRL has advantage enable to identify a technology level through quantitative indicators. However, it takes a lot of efforts such as trials and errors, time and cost to apply it to the project considering the project environments, and stakeholder needs. These include not only to establish TRL management plan from ideal, conceptual and abstractive standards/guidelines such as NASA's, but also to construct TRL management environment enable to apply and manage harmoniously. In the KSLV-II project, it is required to figure out current technology level and technology development trend in the future, to access conveniently, to share related data in real time, and to update periodically for the comprehensive TRL management. From the reason above, the TRL management environment was built by using the systems engineering tool already has been used for other system management data such as requirements in the project. It also could be accomplished a practical management basis of systems engineering from the traceability among system management data including TRL. In this paper, case study results are introduced to manage the TRL for the space launch vehicle using the systems engineering tool in the KSLV-II project.

시스템엔지니어링 전산관리도구를 활용한 우주발사체 기술완성도(TRL) 관리