Concept of operations for test cost analytics in complex manufacturing environments

Manufacturing cost (assembly, test, and rework) necessarily comprises a significant portion of overall system cost in complex engineering and manufacturing environments. Test cost alone can represent 30% of overall cost. Recognizing that both business growth and competitive advantage increase with reduced cost, a question becomes how to organize systems, processes, and personnel effectively to reduce cost. This paper describes the concept of operations used to organize one analytics group in the Engineering Systems Test directorate of Raytheon Missile Systems specifically to achieve the goal of reducing test cost for its complex high-mix low-volume manufacturing environment. The group has been in operation for over 18 months, and the paper provides a concrete example of how organizations can consider deploying analytic resources to achieve specific goals. This paper - and the group and applications it describes - represents one point on a spectrum of possibilities for organizations to increase their test-related analytics bandwidth, and the paper includes enough detail so the approach can be appropriately scrutinized as a model.