MES for New Space Scale-Up: Key Lessons from U-Space

Build the MES Before You Build the Factory: How U-Space Did It

Introduction

In March 2026, Connektica hosted a webinar with MEWS Partners and U-Space on one of the most underrated decisions in New Space industrialization: when to deploy your MES.

Cyril Brotons, VP Industrial Strategy at U-Space and ex-Airbus OneWeb, made the case from the factory floor. His answer is not what most scale-ups expect. And the reasoning behind it is worth unpacking in detail.

This post covers the key lessons from that session: the phasing model Cyril used to take U-Space from a blank page to recurring spacecraft production, the ERP mistake that confirmed his approach, and why the cost of waiting is higher than most teams think.

The full replay is available at the end of this post.

The Webinar: Who Was in the Room

The session brought together Cyril Brotons (VP Industrial Strategy, U-Space), Frédéric Saffar (Partner Aerospace and Defense, MEWS Partners), Rédouane Abbas (Principal Operations, MEWS Partners), and Benjamin Rouger (Head of Sales and Marketing, Connektica).

The conversation covered MES deployment strategy for New Space and defense manufacturers, from first-unit protoflight to recurring production at scale. It included a live Connektica demo of an AIT procedure with automated test execution.

The Decision Nobody Makes on Time

Most space and aeronautics scale-ups digitize after the first unit ships. They build the protoflight on Word procedures, PDFs, shared drives, and one engineer's head. Then they try to bolt an MES on top once the second batch exposes the gaps. By then the manufacturing dossier is a reconstruction job, not a record.

Cyril walked into U-Space in July 2023 with an Airbus-trained reflex: design the production line directly from the design. He found a team of engineers who had never run a production ramp. He had a choice. Start with paper and digitize later. Or capture structured execution data from the first AIT procedure.

His reasoning, captured from the webinar: if you start on paper, you throw it away. You do not improve the next unit from it. You cannot reuse it. So you invest in the backbone first.

He selected the MES that month. The factory would not be delivered for another eight.

What Happened Next

The U-Space timeline makes the argument concrete:

• July 2023. MES selected. No clean room yet.
• March 2024. Clean room delivered.
• June 2024. Integration readiness review on the first two 12U spacecraft.
• June to November 2024. SOP and PANDOR manufactured and tested inside the MES.
• March 2025. Launch on a rideshare.
• 2025. ERP false start. U-Space selected one, spent a year tailoring it, decided end of year it was the wrong fit, shut it down, and went live on a more flexible platform in January 2026. The procedure work done in the MES carried over. The ERP work did not.

The ERP episode is worth naming directly. It confirms the same principle that justified the early MES decision: right tool, right moment. Too early and you pay to configure something you have no use for. Too late and you cannot catch up by adding people.

Connektica MES in use during AIT - structured execution data captured from unit one.

The Four-Phase Model

Cyril described four phases. They are not abstract. Each one maps to something U-Space has done or is doing now.

Phase 1. Protoflight. Manufacture one unit end-to-end inside the MES. Do not optimize anything. Use the first build to challenge whether design-to-manufacturing and design-to-test survive contact with operators. This is where U-Space was in 2024.

Phase 2. Recurring. Before optimizing anything, ask whether you need it at all. Cyril's point: the best engineer asks whether a step is necessary before trying to make it faster. Then optimize full cycles end to end, not isolated tasks. Decide where tests belong so you do not duplicate them across levels.

Phase 3. Kaizen and takt. Where U-Space is now. Simplify the process. Master takt time. Build modular, mobile stations rather than a fixed final assembly line. Target: roughly one spacecraft per week by end of 2028.

Phase 4. Acceleration. Smart tools, cobots, cameras, AI-assisted inspection. Only on a process that is already stable. Otherwise you are automating chaos.

Every phase assumes the structured execution data from phase 1 is still there. If the first unit was built on paper, there is nothing to feed phase 3, and phase 4 is not on the roadmap. It is science fiction.

Why This Matters Now

The manufacturers Connektica works with are usually one phase behind U-Space. They are either preparing a protoflight, or they have just shipped one on Word and Excel and are staring at a ramp they cannot absorb.

Cyril's argument is not "MES matters." That part is settled. His argument is that the cost of capturing structured execution data is roughly the same whether you start at unit one or unit twenty. The reuse value is not. Capture it at unit one and every following unit compounds the investment. Start at unit twenty and the first nineteen are lost information.

One more point worth naming. Cyril did not go alone. He had a young team and adjusted the pace so they could absorb the change. An MES deployed against an unwilling shop floor fails the same way a paper process fails, just more expensively. Phasing is a people decision, not just a tooling decision.

Watch the Full Session

The full conversation is available on replay: MES for New Space Scale-Up — From Prototype to Production.

One hour. Cyril's phasing model, the ERP false start, and a live Connektica demo of an AIT procedure with automated test execution.

Watch the replay

Connektica is a Manufacturing Execution System and Test Automation platform for aerospace, space, defense, and regulated electronics manufacturers. Built to deploy without a 12-month implementation.