A readiness level approach to manufacturing technology development in the aerospace sector: an industrial approach

The use of readiness levels to describe system maturity has become an increasingly recognizable element of the development of technologies for future products in the aerospace and defence sectors. Technology readiness levels (TRLs), as originally defined by NASA, are now widely used by global organizations to articulate the relative maturity of key generic technologies. The implementation of radically new manufacturing capability can also benefit from such an approach. However, the direct use of TRLs in a manufacturing environment is problematic on the basis that it is hard to interpret them precisely, and because the effectiveness of the technology itself is only one of a number of success factors associated with a successful implementation. For several years now the aerospace industry has recognized the need for a manufacturing specific readiness interpretation to enable the delivery of new capabilities in a defined sequence of events. This paper describes an approach used within a single aerospace organization, Rolls-Royce plc. The framework has been identified as a good practice by the UK Aerospace Design and Manufacturing National Technical Committee.