10 Year Experience in Managing ESOC Lessons Learned

Paper ID

36639

author

company

year

2017

abstract

Within the European Space Agency (ESA), ESOC is the operational control centre managing several satellite missions and the accumulated experience thereof. The Lessons Learned process is meant for the improvement of the organisation. As such it is one very effective way, beside others, of implementing the ISO-9001 requirement for continuous improvement. The best outcome of this process is not an unstructured archive of ideas, but the concrete implementation of specific experience-based recommendations, approved by corporate management. The typical implementation of an approved lesson learned for an organisation is a modification of the documented way of working, immediately applicable to all affected staff. It can materialised for example either an in internal standard, or in a local instruction, or in a new training material. The paper will describe the 10 year experience of ESOC in managing lessons learned from operated space missions, highlighting also its historical evolution and its known weaknesses. The focus will be on removing implicit internal barriers within the organisation (e.g. between teams) and on fostering an effective cooperation with external collaborating entities, such as customers, partners and suppliers.