477 Concurrent Engineering  RUAG has its own Concurrent Engineering facility, which  is frequently used in early developments  and  running projects .  

The RUAG CE facility is small but it is a powerful  tool established in 2013 for the specific needs of RUAG.  It is derived from  facilities  at ESA/ ESTEC and  École Polytechnique F édérale de Lausanne.  Two main  elements are taken from the existing CE facilities. The room itself and the CE process with the focus clearly  being on the process . The RUAG specific  process defines the rules and guidelines for the different CE  sessions . The CE facility at RUAG is used for meetings such as brainstorming sessions, project initiation  (project or proposal) , design revi ews, and project review s. A CE session is conducted by a moderator and  CE sessions are repeated in a rhythm of approx. 2 weeks. The number of CE sessions depends on the project  complexity and varies between 2 and 4 sessions. The R UAG CE process is very flexible and  can  be quickly implemented. The additional advantage of the RUAG CE facility is that it is suitable for both large  and small projects.  

Figure 3.  RUAG ’s CE Facility    For the F uture Actuator , the CE facility was used for various reviews. This started with the overall concept  review and then continued into more and more detailed topics down to the lubrication trade- off. With this  approach the Future Actuator was in a constant review loop instead of one or two big reviews. Whenever  there was an open point , the CE room was used until a clear way forward was agreed. Due to the number  of reviews,  a considerably large number of experts  could be invited for the short CE sessions . By doing so,   a wide r ange of valuable inputs was received in a very efficient way .  

Future Actuator Development   For the Future Actuator , the development activities started with concept elaboration. With the available  requirements,  it was evident that for  a high precision mechanism a high precision gearbox was  needed. A ll  other components had  to be built around the gearbox . One of the main findings was that the needed gear  ratio required  more than one gear stage. The gear technologies suitable for the appl ication were planetary  gears, spur gears or Harmonic Drive® g ears. It was quickly clear that a combination with at least a strain  wave gear  was needed to achieve the performance requirements . RUAG already had a smaller actuator  based a combination of a planetary gear and a strain wave gear under development. Therefore, RUAG  already had a good understanding of the advantages and drawbacks of this concept.    RUAG contacted Harmonic Drive AG Germany  and explained the mechanism ’s goals instead of delivering  a detailed requirements specification. Based on this , the conceptual development started. Concepts were  discussed and optimized in several loops between the two companies. Finally, a new concept, with a twostage Harmonic Drive® gear was identified as the m ost interesting one for the Future Actuator . The concept  had the advantage of being backlash free, which is a major  asset for this overall gear ratio.    With the decision on the gear configuration  made,  the work started on the rest of the actuator. The design  of the actuator followed a strict design to cost approach. Many concepts and design studies were prepared