Independent Design Analyses, Inc. (IDA) is a systems engineering and services business located in the Johnson Space Center community in Houston, Texas. IDA has been expanding its business base from a design analysis services provider to also include engineering support services. IDA obtained its 8(a) and Small Disadvantage Business (SDB) certifications from the SBA in November of 2003. IDA has been successfully assisting our customers since it incorporated in the State of Texas in 1993. IDA has experience with Military, Commercial and NASA groups in product development, design verification, problem solving, and safety, reliability, and quality assurance services and programs. With a strong understanding of business strategies and operations, IDA has provided services and expertise to many nationally well known companies. IDA has enhanced our client’s products with our background in safety, quality assurance, and reliability program services. Using original and insightful approaches, IDA has saved many of our customers troubleshooting time and averted numerous product recalls.
In today's competitive world in which a product must be safe, reliable, and easily maintainable, while maintaining low development/ production costs, IDA has provided its unique services to assist companies in achieving these goals. IDA has extensive experience in performing analyses on hardware and software based systems, and can assist in flushing out present and latent system problems. Problems like unexplained output glitches and anomalies, low reliability, cumbersome maintenance, low production yields, unexplained component and system failures, safety/ hazard issues, etc. can be identified by using one or several of IDA's analysis tools and services.
IDA typically interfaces closely with its customers to provide our services either in our own facilities or at our customers’, depending on the need and requirements. IDA has provided its services on a task by task basis, or on extended support for a program.
Safety Critical Systems
IDA fulfills many Department of Defense, Automotive, and Underwriter Laboratories (UL) requirements for safety critical systems on programs in development or presently in operation. IDA has extensive experience in Engine Controllers, Flight Control Systems, Vehicle Control Modules, Medical Equipment, Power Distribution and Control Systems, Guidance Systems, Process Control Systems, and Home and Commercial Appliance systems. IDA provides Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance services and programs that can also include a large compliment of different types of analyses in compliance with military or commercial standards such as:
- Hardware, Software and Integrated Sneak Analysis
- Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), Hardware and Software
- Reliability Block Diagram Analysis (RBDA)
- Maintainability Analysis
- Hazard and Preliminary Hazard Analysis, Hardware and Software
- Probabilistic Risk Assessments
- Fault Tree Analysis, Hardware and Integrated HW/SW
- Reliability Prediction
- Worst Case Analysis
- Requirements Traceability Analysis
- Test Optimization Analysis (TOA)
- Discrete Event Simulation (DES)
In the process of expanding into providing more engineering support services, IDA has provided and developed reliability programs to commercial companies in the aircraft and oil drilling industries. IDA has provided continuous reliability support in the oil drilling industry, which has included reliability data analyses, Fault Tree Analyses, Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analyses (FMECA), Reliability training, and Reliability Program development tailored for specific projects. In the aircraft industry, IDA provided reliability programs that would establish the application of systematic and highly-disciplined engineering analyses, tasks, and tests that are needed to determine the level of reliability that had been achieved, and to establish an effective formal program for accurately reporting, analyzing, and correcting failures. Also, included were developing guidelines that would be needed to evaluate the Reliability Plans submitted by the vendors. These guidelines were intended to provide the necessary means for a company to assess the quality and effectiveness of the vendor’s delivered products.
IDA provides independent assessments and trouble shooting services to both commercial and military contracts of existing programs to resolve problems or provide assurances that the designed preventative mechanisms are valid. IDA provides experience in debugging analog and digital technologies; from hardware cards to components and from high-level software languages to assembly code. We also tackle those complex situations when PALs, EPLDs and ASICs are used by applying our analysis techniques to the internal functions of the devices. Our staff can solve your problems quickly by providing a system level solution to the identified anomaly. This system level knowledge of your design can also generate fixes that do not create additional “bugs” and reduces the potential for future problems.
IDA provides this service by re-thinking the sequencing and level of detail of accepted approaches to engineering analyses. IDA determines where the problem areas already exist or where enhanced reliability/ maintainability/ safety is required. We then provide the plan to apply the analyses to the level of detail necessary to uncover the problems. IDA provides solutions that can identify problems in specific areas, problems that your design team may not have discovered yet, and also identify potential areas of concern. This saves time and money because our staff of experienced engineers can work directly with a design team such that extra personnel are not needed to maintain your schedule.
IDA provides Requirements Traceability, which is performed to assure that all requirements are implemented into the system as either hardware, software or both. IDA performs Traceability Analysis that shows the hierarchy between requirements, any differences between the "parent-child" functionality, and whether any requirements are "orphaned", i.e. having no parent requirements. IDA has developed a new tool for representing all this information called a Requirements Traceability Difference Matrix. The Requirements Traceability Difference Matrix format graphically shows how each requirement is hierarchically related between the parents and the children and any differences or issues between the parent-child requirements within the function or other system functions - all in a single matrix. This graphical depiction provides the Systems Engineer a roadmap between system hardware and software specifications, back to all the functional specifications that defined it and quickly indicates any orphaned requirements. The Requirements Traceability Difference Matrix also serves a second purpose when performing future system upgrades or changes. If any of the requirements change, the Requirements Traceability Difference Matrix can graphically indicate all the affected requirements above or below the change in the hierarchy that may necessitate further review or re-design of the system. This tool is especially useful by both the Systems Engineering and the Quality Departments when considering the effects of upgrades and changes.
IDA has developed a method to assure that your product’s testing program doesn’t become a demonstration of basic functions. An effective System Test Program requires in-depth knowledge of the system requirements as well as the "as-built" implementation of the requirements. Often the Test Engineer does not have the insight into all the interactions between system functions in the "as-built" configuration. IDA uses our Baseline Analysis Tools that represent your system implementation and your requirements to create products aimed at streamlining the Test Program. This new analysis is called a Test Optimization Analysis, TOA. IDA, using the TOA methodology, can maximize requirements coverage by testing and generating more efficient test cases and procedures.
Experienced Team
IDA has experience with Military, Commercial and NASA groups. Our services follow Military and Commercial standards to assist and assure certification of your products. We have extensive experience in Engine Controllers, Flight Control Systems, Vehicle Control Modules, Medical Equipment, Power Distribution and Control Systems, Guidance Systems, and Process Control Systems.
IDA engineers have experience in the integration, testing and quality assurance of large development programs such as the Johnson Space Center Mission Control Center in Houston. Integration activities included working with multiple subsystems and multiple contractors to assure that all delivery schedules were met and any integration problems resolved. Quality Assurance activities were performed throughout the development lifecycle and included development of processes and procedures to be used in the development of the Control Center. Quality Engineers were also responsible for assuring that all requirements were tested and any problems are corrected and verified. One of the major challenges faced by the development team was to assure that the Control Center would be available 100% of the time when needed. This included testing and assurance of all backup systems to assure that any failure of a primary system or subsystem would result in the proper failover to a backup system. All failover activity had to be transparent to the users of the Control Center.
NASA specific experience includes support and analysis experience in Reliability, Maintainability, Safety and Quality Assurance. We have extensive experience with both the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. Our personnel can also perform FMECA’s, PRA’s, Fault Trees, Hazard Analysis, HW and SW Sneak Analysis, and RBDAs per the Shuttle and Station requirements and standards.
Independent Design Analyses, Inc. (IDA) has over 150 years of combined experience in many Design methodologies with many companies, and various industries such as:
Companies
- The Boeing Company
- Allied Signal, Inc.
- Ford Motor Company
- Raytheon TI Systems
- Loral Vought Systems
- Halliburton Energy Services
- General Electric
- Honeywell
- Applied Materials
- EXMAR Offshore
- Alliant Techsystems (ATK)
- Electrolux
- L3Com
- Lockheed Martin
- SAIC
- Perkin Elmer
Industries
- Air Force
- Army
- Automotive Industry
- Energy (Oil Field, Nuclear Reactor Control)
- Home Appliance Industry
- Marines
- NASA
- Navy
- Royal Air Force
- Semiconductor Industry