Total Ownership Cost Focus Area
Strategic Drivers: The fiscal realities of decreasing budgets and the ever-increasing costs of manpower, materials, labor and fuel present significant challenges for the Department of the Navy. To ensure our naval forces continue to maintain global dominance, future platforms and combat systems must be affordable to acquire, operate and maintain over their entire life cycle.
Vision: Support the goal to reduce Total Ownership Cost (TOC) by developing and aiding the insertion of technology to reduce platform acquisition cost, reduce life cycle and sustainment costs and achieve crew manning requirements. Total Ownership Cost includes all costs associated with the research, development, procurement, operation, and disposal of platforms, combat systems and associated elements over the full lifecycle.
Description: This focus area is aimed at significantly improving affordability of current and future naval systems by reducing TOC while not adversely affecting system performance and while improving platform and combat systems’ availability and readiness to execute assigned missions. To effect TOC reduction, major cost drivers over a platform’s life cycle must be understood early in system development and programs initiated in the early stages of science and technology to enable significant affordability improvement over the life cycle of a system. For platform affordability, developing viable solutions before Milestone A of the platform’s acquisition process is the goal. Modeling and simulation to validate ship and platform designs, provide total platform definition, improve manufacturing and fabrication processes and achieve overall schedule compression offers large cost reduction potential. The development and use of open architecture approaches to shipboard and support software enable systems that can be delivered and maintained efficiently. Reducing platform and combat systems’ lifecycle costs facilitates longer operational availabilities. Major goals in the life cycle cost area include improvements in corrosion and wear protection, elevated temperature coatings and improved metallic and nonmetallic materials. Attention to and definition of maintenance and repair processes early in system development can positively impact maintenance and repair schedule compression to result in improved platform and combat systems availability. With respect to crew manning requirements and operations, smart systems to control and monitor energy consumption, as well as the health of critical systems, can support both manning and resource conservation. Effective training and reliable man-to-machine interfaces will allow for more effective use of platform resources and potentially reduced operational cost or an expanded operational capability. For ship and submarines, clean hull technology will result in more effective use of energy usage and additional deployment time.
Objectives:
Platform Affordability
- Advanced platform design methods, design validation tools and tools to aid in rapid total platform definition
- Open architecture approach to platform hardware and software
- Cost-reducing, innovative manufacturing technologies
- Manufacturing and assembly sequencing and spatial modeling and simulation methods
- New affordable materials
Lifecycle and Sustainment Cost
- Advanced corrosion-prevention materials and advanced coating processes
- Improved wear materials
- Extended-life elevated temperature materials, coatings and systems
- Advanced repair and maintenance processes to maximize ship, airframe and vehicle availabilities
Crew Manning and Operational Capabilities
- System and energy monitoring automation
- Robust hardware and software to support improved platform condition-based maintenance
- Improved training methods
- Enhanced human-equipment interface development
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