The design to cost concept establishes cost as a design parameter to be considered for a system throughout its life cycle. Cost is considered a design parameter equal in importance to technical requirements and schedule. Rockwell and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have jointly learned that the most effective way to implement design to cost in our programs is within a product team environment. Also, we have established that the success of the program is heavily dependent on the exchange of information. It is important that the necessary steps be taken early to create an open data exchange. A methodology has been determined to increase communication between team members on performance versus cost tradeoffs using spreadsheets on personal computers.
Operational and cost effectiveness analyses are essential elements in the decision making process for both government and civil programs. Programs, now more than ever, require integrated system level models to perform early assessments of system tradeoffs between operational capability, performance, cost and schedule. At Rockwell Space Systems Division, an approach has been developed to achieve easy integration of various quantitative products of integrated product teams into a “system model”. This approach, at the present, is based on use of spreadsheets. We have taken advantage of the availability of PCs and Macs and familiarity of most engineers with spreadsheet operations. A demonstration of this approach is presented in the context of a satellite development program.
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