An Integrated, Mission-Based Logistics and Maintenance Simulation Environment for Optimizing Air Vehicle LCC

"In response to the USAF's Small Business Innovative Research Topic AF02-243, Impact Technologies in cooperation with the Boeing Company and Battelle, propose to develop an integrated mission simulation environment software tool directly linked withlogistics and maintenance support cost models, data and metrics for managing air vehicle logistics activities and life cycle costs. The proposed, simulation-based program will integrate multiple sources of legacy flight mission data with various airvehicle support cost models to evaluate aircraft acquisition, maintenance, operations and support costs in terms of leading cost drivers and component failure modes, mission capability and effectiveness, and report simulation outputs in graphical andtabular formats. A unique aspect of this proposed program is related to the capability of performing real-time mission simulations for a fleet of aircraft and relating them to critical aircraft component failures, resulting maintenance required and theassociated life cycle costs from acquisition through retirement. An open systems software architecture using either a CORBA-based (common object request broker architecture) infrastructure or web-enabled, agent-based application using XML is envisionedfor most effectively integrating the various sources of data and models.During this Phase I program, the Impact team of professionals familiar with many existing USAF and OEM mission simulation and supp