half full and empty. There is no inventory piling up between the cooks (worker A) and the servers  (worker B), yet the servers never run out of ingredients.  Just imaging if a nine-part mechanism could be assembled with only 2.8 man-minutes of labor. While this  may be extreme for the space mechanism field it is illustrative of the incredible power of efficient design of  an assembly process.    Key Point: The principles of lean manufacturing are very applicable to volume production  of mechanisms.  Key Point: A relentless search for waste will prove valuable in any aspect of any  mechanism program.  There are some opportunities to improve mechanism assembly with automation. Most engineers  immediately think of the rapidly growing field of robotics. Robotics have been found effective for pick and  place type tasks. In some cases, pick and place machines common in electronic card manufacturing can  be designed to support mechanism assembly tasks. Robots are not a panacea but can provide good  value in the right applications. The best applications for robotics seem to be repetitive tasks and those  tasks that could be performed 24 hours a day without supervision.    One can look for labor intensive tasks which can be automated, one example being parts washing.  Systems that automate multi-stage cleaning processes are available and will save cost given sufficient  manufacturing volume. The conclusion is that there are many automation tools and processes available  from industry to investigate leveraging to reduce assembly costs.  Mechanisms Considerations for New Space: Integration and Test Phase  Test. Big Space programs generally start test planning from a perspective of ‘what can be tested?’. New  Space programs generally start test planning from a perspective of ‘what absolutely must be tested?’.   The nature of mechanisms is that test is often the only true method of validating performance and  reliability. Reducing the amount of testing goes against the author’s comfort zone, yet it can and must be  done for volume production of space mechanisms as it is done successfully in other manufacturing fields.  Most mechanisms engineers would agree that the nature of mechanisms is that testing is crucial to  proving performance and reliability. Verification by analysis and inspection of mechanisms without a test  has historically proven inadequate. This is a particular challenge for mechanism production where testing  is very expensive, and we are looking to drive cost out of the program. There is no easy answer –  extensive testing is great for proving reliability. Limited testing is great for cost reduction but exposes the  risk of the severe pain of an on-orbit failure.  Each testing program is unique, so the following is a discussion of options for the reader to consider for  their unique mechanism effort. Each mechanism team must make their own tough choices regarding the  balance of testing versus cost.  Development testing: The goal of development testing is to expose all flaws in a design so that they will  be removed prior to going into production because design flaws found while in a production run are  extremely damaging. Extensive development testing is key to eliminating flaws and benefits considerably  from the hardware rich approach described above. When time is short, one can also find value by  finishing development testing in parallel with early production. While it is ideal to finish development  before starting production, continuing development can serve useful to expose a remaining flaw while still  early in production instead of building the flaw into a large quantity of delivered mechanisms. Life testing  of development units is a prime example of the value in finishing development in parallel with early  production since it takes so much time to complete.  NASA/CP—2018-219887 454