Integration of Technology Roadmapping Information into DMSMS-Driven Design Refresh Planning of the V-22 Advanced Mission Computer

Overview:
"As the pace of technological progress increases, technology obsolescence
problems will have a greater effect on traditionally sustainment-dominated industries.
Many organizations rely solely on reactive approaches to manage obsolescence
events as they occur, often employing lifetime buys, aftermarket sources and other
mitigation approaches to ensure that they have enough parts to last through the
system’s lifecycle. Strategically planned design refreshes coupled with various
mitigation approaches can, in many cases, lead to greater cost avoidance than reactive
mitigation alone.

Design refresh planning is performed by organizations that wish to avoid the
high costs of purely reactive obsolescence solutions. Planning to phase-out specific
parts at certain times lessens the reliance on reactive solutions (and the resulting quest
for obsolete parts) and, in turn, lessens the total cost of sustaining a system.
However, design refreshing solely to manage obsolescence is not practical for many
systems, and therefore, obsolescence management refresh activities need to be
coordinated with the technology insertion roadmap. Technology insertion roadmaps
are developed to dictate how the system’s functionality and performance must be
changed over time. Technology roadmaps reflect an organization’s internal
technology goals and budget cycles, and give insight into the organization’s inherent
modus operandi.

The MOCA (Mitigation of Obsolescence Cost Analysis) software tool has
been designed to generate and select an optimum design refresh plan for a system.
This thesis describes an extension to MOCA that allows information from technology
roadmaps to be used as constraints in MOCA. The integration of technology
roadmap information into MOCA’s decision analysis ensures that selected refresh
plans meet roadmap imposed timing constraints, and that the costs of roadmap
specified actions are included within relevant refreshes.

These new developments in MOCA are discussed in the context of the V-22
Advanced Mission Computer (AMC) system. The mechanics of the MOCA tool’s
optimization analysis with roadmapping considerations are described and the cost
avoidance resulting from the optimum refresh plan is articulated in business case
terms." ( Jessica.L.M., 2007)


Jessica L. M. (2007) University of Maryland, College Park.