Rapid Cost Estimates of Military Aerospace Vehicles (MAV's)

Despite the importance of life cycle costing (LCC), it has rarely been integrated into the design activity. One of the reasons has been the lack of easily learned tools that are cost effective and whose results are non-trivial, i.e., would be sufficientlypowerful that development engineers would consider using them. In this research, we will develop a tool, which we call the Propulsion Life Cycle Cost (PLCC) Tool to address this need. PLCC will be capable of estimating the development, acquisition,operations, and maintenance cost of propulsion systems in particular and of the a complete Military Aerospace Vehicle (MAV) more generally. PLCC will be based on an enhancement of a successful off-the-shelf decision support tool for lifecycle costingcalled D-LCC. D-LCC will be enhanced with risk assessment, parts database, and other capabilities to tailor it for MAV applications. A key element in the success of this effort will be the seniority and expertise of the staff involved in cost datacompilation, who will be effective in gathering cost data through their own experience and network of contacts. Because of the maturity of the baseline general purpose product being used in this effort, a fully functional software tool, together withdocumentation will be delivered at the end of the Phase I effortThe technology developed under this research will be useful in any organization with a Design To Cost (DTC) objective or operational environment in which capital and operating & maintenancebudgets must be traded off. The PLCC tool will be marketed to the growing number of commercial and Governmental space entities. PLCC will be less expensive and easier to use than other currently available LCC tools. With the additional of applicationspecific data, we anticipate having a competitive edge with which to enter the market.: PLCC, with its easily learned interface and its powerful, domain specific database will be a good match for this community of users.