The Relationship of Technology and Design Maturity to DoD Weapon System Cost Change and Schedule Change During Engineering and Manufacturing Development,

Abstract

Every year, the Department of Defense (DoD) invests billions of dollars on the development of major defense acquisition programs. In return, many of these weapon systems have been plagued with cost overruns and schedule delays during the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase. Under conflicting guidance, DoD and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggest that weapon systems should contain subsystems with relatively mature technologies (based on the Technology Readiness Level of critical technologies) and design mature (based on the percentage of releasable design drawings) during system development. However, there has been no published research to date on the relationship between technology and design maturity guidance and the resulting cost change and schedule change of DoD weapon systems. The research presented in this paper confirms that the GAO guidance for design maturity can lead to a reduction of cost growth and schedule slippage of DoD weapon systems. In contrast, the research indicates that technology maturity guidance only impacts the schedule change of weapon systems, and not the potential cost change. With the quantitative results from the research, DoD and GAO officials can provide additional guidance to the planning and execution of the EMD phase, such as allocation of research and development funds to maturity achievement efforts.

Use of TRL in the systems engineering toolbox

“…The expected cost of the next TRL transition should be reassessed on a periodical basis in order to evaluate the technologies likely applicability into systems that will be developed (Gatian, 2015). The recommended acceptance criteria from GAO, TRL 7, was found proven with an average 4,8% cost overrun with all technology matured, while immature technology provided an average 34,9 % cost overrun (Meier, 2008;Katz, et al, 2015). It is apparent that TRL 7 is highly preferable at integration, which further indicates that the decision makers tend to underestimate the cost of maturing technology from TRL 6 to 7.…”

“…It is apparent that TRL 7 is highly preferable at integration, which further indicates that the decision makers tend to underestimate the cost of maturing technology from TRL 6 to 7. The relative schedule change (RSC) is clearly correlated to the relation between critical design review (CDR) to milestone C (MS C) in the US DoD development process, indicating that a high Design Maturity at CDR is more relevant than the TRL, (Katz, et al, 2015).…”

“…Many of the existing papers on TRLs are based on a limited number of programs run by US Government Agencies. Several of the authors have used numbers directly from NASA's "Resource Data Storage and Retrieval data base" (REDSTAR) for their studies or used the Lee & Thomas (2001) study as a basis (Gatian, 2015;Dubos, et al, 2008;Dubos et al, 2011;Engel, et al, 2012;Azizian, et al, 2009;Katz, et al, 2015;Meier, 2008) . The knowledge captured in the above-mentioned studies are likely to be colored by the environment in which the information was gathered, but may still give an indication of the value of TRL that could be applicable also in other domains.…”

Validating the Use of Performance Risk Indices for System-Level Risk and Maturity Assessments

“…SARs summary tables document the progress of MDAPs with respect to cost, schedule, and performance. These summary tables have been available and reported to the U.S. Congress since 1969 (Katz, 2015). The tables contain the breakdown and sum of the annual and year-to-date cost variances of the MDAPs.…”

Technology Readiness Levels at 40: A Study of State-of-the-Art Use, Challenges, and Opportunities

“…A study of 62 US Department of Defense programs found that those programs which reached TRL 7 or higher by the start of system development finished practically on time and on budget, whereas those programs with technologies below a TRL 7 showed, on average, development cost growth of 32%, acquisition unit cost increase of 30%, and schedule delay of TRL 1 TRL 2 TRL 3 TRL 4 TRL 5 TRL 6 TRL 7 TRL 8 TRL 9 5 20 months [8]. Another study of 37 Department of Defense weapon systems showed that technology maturity guidance had a statistically significant effect on the schedule overrun of these systems [9]. These findings encourage our further investigation of TRL usage in current practice.…”