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which should have been staggered in time sometimes occur almost simultaneously.  As these efforts require multiple steps to accomplish the necessary tasks, if too many occur simultaneously, the strain on facilities and personnel resources is tremendous.  For short periods of 2 to 3 months in mid 1985 and early 1986, facilities and personnel were being required to perform at roughly twice the budgeted flight rate.

Change rates are tied to the frequency of flights (fig. 5(b)), and late changes make an impact on the STS Integrations and Operations Office's budget.  The composite of major payload changes from mission 41-G to 51-L (fig. 7) clearly shows that, although 60 percent of the changes occur by the CIR timeframe, more than half the remaining changes do occur after L-5 months and cause a significant budget and manpower impact (fig. 8).

Middeck and secondary payload changes have a minimal manpower and budget impact when compared to major payloads.  However, when the aggregate number and the timeframe into which they are added in the integration process (fig. 8) are considered, they constitute a major distraction from primary operations.

In considering the tasks which are characterized by parallel efforts, Engineering Flight Products generated for the CIR generally are found in this class (fig. 9).  These products are generated under a contract that allows for increased budget expenditures as necessary to meet localized high workloads.  However, even with this built-in flexibility, the requested changes occasionally come close enough to the reviews that the parallel effort transitions over to a serial effort as facilities and personnel resources are saturated.  This impact occurred on 51-D's Delta CIR, 62-A's Delta CIR, and 61-C's CIR, when the products were shipped less than 10 days before the reviews.

(2) Serial Effects

A serial effort, by contrast, is best exemplified by crew training in simulators, for this training cannot occur until software is available to drive the simulation computers.  The software cannot be programmed until the specific flight configuration that the software represents has been defined.  This difficulty leads to a situation not only peripherally sensitive to budget constraints but primarily sensitive to time and schedule.

An examination of the standalone training schedules (fig. 10) shows that, in early January 1986, the late remanifesting and inability to meet milestone delivery requirements caused a serious problem in time available for crew training.  During January 1986, this problem was getting progressively worse.  The only options for recovery were to compress crew training or slip the launches.

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