An Aging Hypothesis Test for Army Systems

This paper develops a parametric approach that analyzes trends between age, in terms of year of manufacture (YoM), of an Army system and its respective parts cost per mile (PCM) within a homogeneous group of systems. Visual PCM trends across age groups can be misleading, so this type of methodology is necessary to analyze statistically significant trends. If there is no aging, this would confirm the adequacy of the Army's current maintenance philosophies. If there is indication of aging, this would highlight the need to identify the component drivers contributing to aging and increasing maintenance costs and to change recapitalization and replacement policies. This methodology reveals no indication of systems aging for the chosen system analyzed over most homogeneous groups. This suggests the Army has an appropriate maintenance philosophy. The application of the methodology on an Army system is outlined in Section 4.