Stoke Space, which develops fully reusable rockets, has announced a new tool to help hardware companies track the design, testing, and integration of parts. A new tool, Fusion, targets unglamorous but essential aspects of hardware workflows.
Stoke CEO Andy Lapsa said in a recent interview that the solution was born out of “the pain that’s everywhere in the industry.” The current parts tracking landscape is characterized by cumbersome and disconnected solutions built on stacks of paperwork and spreadsheets. Many of the existing tools are not optimized for “work on the ground,” but for finance and procurement teams and even executives, Lapsa explained. increase.
In contrast, Fusion is designed to optimize simple inventory handling and parts organization, keeping track of parts throughout their life as they are assembled into larger assemblies and put through testing. In extreme cases such as hardware failures, Fusion helps teams correlate anomalous data with the exact serial number of the part involved.
Image credit: Stoke Space
“When you think about aerospace in general, you need and want to be able to understand the parts genealogy of all the part numbers and serial numbers in your assembly,” says Lapsa. “So you can go back forever in the history of all these parts, not just understand the configuration.”
Lapsa has clarified that Fusion is the result of an organic need within the company for better parts management, but designing a fully reusable rocket is complicated after all. Turning it into a salable product was an early decision made by the Stoke team. This is a remarkable example of a rocket startup creating a revenue stream while the vehicle is still in development.
Fusion is especially relevant for startups. Many of the existing tools are designed for production use, and a lot of the hardware isn’t the rapidly changing R&D environment that startups find, Lapsa added. Speed and accuracy are paramount in these environments.
Brent Bradbury, Stoke’s head of software, also agreed with these comments.
“Parts are changing, people are changing, processes are changing,” he said. “This allows you to capture everything that happens without any extra work.”
