Rockwell Collins is an avionics company headquartered in Iowa. The author worked as a co-op in the Commercial Systems department, which develops avionics systems for commercial aircraft. Their main responsibility was a software tool testing and documentation project for the Bombardier CSeries program. Over three months, the author tested the tool, created documentation, proposed design changes, and provided customer support. They were offered a part-time role to continue working on improving the tool's usability and documentation.

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Rockwell Collins Co-Op Session I
Aleksandra Dervisevic
12/17/15
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The company
2.1.History
2.2.Rockwell Collins today
3. Commercial Systems department
4. My duties and responsibilities
5. My main project
1. Introduction
The following paper contains a description of my Co-Op experience for the fall semester
of 2015. I personally gained very valuable experience through this job opportunity,
where I learnt how to work in a team when the time constraint is critical, I was able to
make use of my judgement to analyze and resolve issues as they came up, I
participated in organized and effective brainstorming and improved many of my soft
skills.
In this report I will give a short introduction about the company, then I will provide a
description of the department I worked in and its roles, I will introduce the main project
my team worked in and my responsibilities in all the projects I got involved in.
2. The company
2.1. History
Rockwell Collins is a multinational company headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that
provides avionics equipment and information technology systems to US defense
contractors, international defense departments and aircraft manufacturers.

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Rockwell Collins was founded in 1933 as Collins Radio. At that time, the company made
short wave radio equipment. It became highly recognized when it provided the stable
communication link with the South Pole expedition in 1933.
Collins kept growing in the marketplace with the production of flight control instruments,
transmitters and receivers, which lead them to the participation in America’s space
programs like Apollo, Gemini and Mercury, making communication possible between
astronauts and earth stations.
The company was acquired in 1973 by Rockwell International, a high-tech defense
contractor, that further impulsed the production of avionics equipment. It was not until
2001 that Rockwell Collins, Inc., became an independent business through a spinoff
from Rockwell International.
2.2. Rockwell Collins today
Nowadays, Rockwell Collins is a very competent company in multiple areas within
avionics systems, which include cabin management, communications, displays and
surveillance systems, flight control and navigation. Today, the main programs at
Rockwell Collins include the Mitsubishi Regional Jet, the Bombardier Global and
CSeries 110 and 130, the Comac ARJ21, the Embraer KC-390, the Boeing 737 and
787, the Airbus A320 and A350, and multiple others along with military projects. Its
presence is all around the five continents with offices in Brazil, Mexico, France,
Germany, UAE, Australia, and many locations within the US like Iowa, Florida,
California and Utah amongst others.
In the near future, Rockwell Collins is well established in the commercial systems
market where it provides avionics content on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus
A350XWB. In the military side, the company will continue providing airborne, ground
and shipboard communication systems. Some of the most notable competitors include
Raytheon Company, BAE Systems plc and Honeywell Aerospace.
3. Commercial Systems Department
I was a Co-Op for Commercial Systems. This is one of the four branches in the
company along with Government Systems, International and Service Solutions and
Information Management Solutions. Within Commercial Systems, there is further
division between Business and Regional Systems and Air Transport Systems. Under
Business and Regional Systems, most programs are part of product line managed by a
Program Management team. The program I was involved in was the Bombardier
CSeries.
The main goal of the department is to sustain the development and integration of the
multiple systems in which our product line is involved, the delivery of the final product
along with the appropriate documentation and direct customer support. The primary

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responsibilities of the different engineers in the department ranges depending of the job
title, going from Systems Engineers, to Sr Systems Engineers and Pr Systems
Engineers. As a systems engineer, the duties include knowledge in domain and
requirements in assigned area, verification and validation testing for systems and an
understanding of the internal processes, methods and tools used to assist the
documentation efforts.
4. My duties and responsibilities
I came to the project in the final phase before the first certification of the Bombardier
CSeries. As a Systems Engineer, my main duties included:
1. Change request investigation from internal and external customers. I assisted Sr
Systems Engineers (sub-system leads) for my first month. I learned how to
efficiently interpret specific language used in these requests and how to manage
my resources when looking for a solution.
2. Requirements verification and validation. I worked on this task assisting Sr
Systems Engineers for a couple of weeks. This was a large amount of work I
needed to complete due to the strict deadlines, and from this I learnt how to
focus on the important information in long documents and how to maximize my
knowledge on tools to perform my work faster.
3. Test procedure development: testing for certification of avionics systems. I
performed co-pilot testing on simulation environment for a month, doing an
average of 10 hours a week. I learned how to use some of Rockwell Collins
avionics equipment in the cockpit simulator and to concisely describe problems
as they were found during testing.
4. Software tool testing, UI design change proposal, system description, concept of
operation, database entry and customer support. I lead the efforts of the program
systems team along with the Sr Systems Engineer lead. This was my biggest
project, since I worked on it for nearly three months. I will describe it in depth in
the next section of this paper.
5. My main project
My main project consisted on getting a good amount of expertise in one of the
company’s tools so that I could perform testing, troubleshooting, customer support, a
proper systems description, an efficient workflow for new users, and a design change
proposal to improve the usability. I stayed on the project for around 3 months. During
the first month I would dedicate half of my time to it, but after that I worked on it for the
entirety of my time at the company.

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The reason why I started working on this tool is because the Sr Systems Engineer in
charge of the customer support was not able to create all the necessary documentation
that this tool required on top of all of her other systems engineering tasks. When I
started working with her, she became my mentor and guided me through the process of
creating appropriate systems documentation that this tool was lacking.
The first step was to start getting exposed to the tool by simply creating objects that I
could practice and experiment with. After a week or so, when I started to understand all
the functions the tool offers, I started using real data from the customer to test and
troubleshoot issues. This allowed me to find many flaws in the program that needed a
fix from the software engineers. After this training and testing period, I started
supporting my mentor creating the necessary documentation for the tool, like the
system description and an efficient workflow that we built from our own experience with
the tool.
The most interesting part came when we started brainstorming about a newly designed
user interface that would improve the usability of the tool, which lacked efficiency and
speed. We teamed with a couple of software engineers and a program engineer to
organize a set of ideas that could be presented to upper management and then be
implemented.
My time on this project was characterized by lots of critical issues the customer would
report that needed immediate attention. There was a constant switch from working on
documentation to quick troubleshooting to support the customer’s testing procedures
because we were approaching certification. Another difficult time was when my mentor
was away for a week and I had to help with the coordination of all the activities she was
involved with. It was definitely a great learning opportunity because I experienced how
Sr Engineers manage to work while involved in multiple projects at the same time. I had
to make myself available at times I am not used to, because especially supporting the
customer was a very demanding activity.
Towards the end of my Co-op I was offered to continue as a part-time during next
semester due to the nature of the project I was involved with. Being one of the few
people that had been exposed to the tool and its deficiencies for so long made me a
great resource for the program. The team has not achieved a long-term solution yet, so
while working remotely that will be part of my responsibilities. I plan to keep working on
the systems description to try to make it as detailed as possible so that it can be used
as a baseline of what the tool needs to be able to do. I will continue supporting my
mentor in relation to the customer, making the testing or necessary data entry, and I
also plan to build training material for future users of the tool.