About
Independent
Design Analyses, Inc.
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.
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)
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.
IDA have 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
*
Electrolux
*
L3Com
*
Lockheed Martin
*
SAIC
Industries:
*
Air Force
*
Army
*
Automotive Industry
*
Energy (Oil Field, Nuclear Reactor Control)
*
Home Appliance Industry
*
Marines
*
NASA
*
Navy
*
Royal Air Force
*
Semiconductor Industry
