Innovations in supportability engineering using business analysis

When a Department of National Defence (DND) project manager expresses clarity in how much money he/she needs to implement a project as well as cover through-life costs, it is an optimal situation. The information presented in this paper answers the “CENTRAL” question: what process could be used to integrate Availability Reliability and Maintainability (AR&M) and In-Service Support (ISS) considerations to improve system performance and reduce ownership cost? It is shown that in order to minimize costs and increase the performance of real-time, mission-critical systems it is necessary to influence the requirements and design much earlier than at once thought and before all of the Logistics Support Analysis (LSA) data is available. It is further shown that early consideration of supportability requirements analysis, business case analysis and logistics support cost modelling will not only have a large influence on the requirements for cost-effective procurement of a system but will also have a very large effect on Design for Supportability (DfS). To do this a new Supportability Program Process (SPP) has been created and described which emphasizes the DfS approach and early AR&M considerations. An overview of a process for conducting a Sustainment Business Case Analysis (SBCA) is presented including its relationship to the new SPP. This is rounded out by adapting the DND enterprise standard OmegaPS Analyzer® supportability and modeling tool to record Life Cycle Costs (LCC) and a Baseline Comparison System (BCS). Obtaining Federal Government funding for major acquisitions can be a difficult task as sustainment costs must be estimated up front even before the configuration of the systems to be purchased and fielded is known. Cost validation reports must be secured from the Chief Financial Officer because of the need to exercise fiscal jurisprudence of taxpayers' money. This new process will help ease the task and answer the “CENTRAL” question.