Level Of Repair Analysis
Life Cycle Cost
Logistics Support Analysis
Maintenance Task Analysis
Spares Modeling
FMECA
Reliability Centered Maintenance
Analysis
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The cost of a system or equipment to the end
user over it planned lifetime is its Life Cycle
Cost of ownership. The LCC is the sum total of
direct, indirect, recurring, non-recurring, &
other related costs, which are estimated to be
incurred and include costs associated with design,
research & development, investment, operations,
maintenance, & support of a system over it's
life cycle. The life cycle of a system can be
defined in several distinct phases, from proposal,
conception, design, development, production, and
fielding, to the disposal phase. In determining the
LCC of a system, consideration must be made to
the overall maintenance concept. This may include
issues such as whether a commercial maintenance
infrastructure or a dedicated maintenance
infrastructure will be employed.
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Take the example of a consumer who buys an
automobile, prior to making his final decision he
may consider the purchase price, finance charges,
the fuel consumption and even the reliability of
the vehicle in question.
The consumer would trade-off this criteria with
another vehicle makes, he or she is considering
from a competitor. Fortunately for most consumers,
although they may not think so at the time, the
repairs cost for a automobile or truck is
relatively cheap compared to specialised commercial
and military systems
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This is in part due to the fact that when they have a
vehicle repaired, they are using a commercial support
infrastructure that is utilized by many other consumers. The
cost of the support infrastructure is spread across the
general population.
In the case where specialized equipment is procured and
new or dedicated support infrastructure is required, this
would have impact upon the LCC. This can also be compounded
by the fact that spare parts are specialized and themselves
are designed and manufactured to a higher quality level,
e.g. military standards. To effectively implement a LCC
analysis, many parameters must be taken into consideration
to determine the cost to the user during the system's
expected operational life. This includes spares, repair
turn-around, training duration, skill levels, technical
publication, operating cost etc.
The LCC analysis is most effective and will have its
greatest impact on cost at the conceptual and early design
phase, of a program. Thus the following should be
considered:
- Early analysis data can be of poor quality
- Model should be updated as design progresses and as
better data becomes available
- Model used to make critical design and support
decisions
- Must use the LSA/LORA outputs
- Assumptions made must be monitored & changed as
necessary (e.g., inflation rates, quantities, cost)
- Changes in the engineering schedules must be
reflected in model
- Front-end analysis
- Estimates development and maintenance cost
- Allows for variables in predicted growth and
enhancements of software
- Estimates for software is based upon developers
skills/experience, Source Line of Code (SLOC), platform
(military/commercial), programming complexity,
development standards, etc.
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