View non-flash version
en-USwww.sname.org/sname/mt en-USJuly 2012 en-US OSCAM provided the program office and bidding companies with a common set of inputs and denitions. is resulted in fewer questions about where costs were accounted for or the meaning of cost catego -ries. is in turn meant that more time was spent on evaluating the bids themselves. Analysis of alternatives. e U.S. Navy uses AoA studies to determine the best way to meet a stated mission need. An AoA requires a comparison of lifecycle costs (research and development, procurement, O&S, and disposal) between the options and for the existing solution. OSCAM has been used to support sev -eral ship-related AoA studies. OSCAM acted as a common framework for all of the O&S cost estimates. is means that the estimates are all created in the same manner, which makes for easy comparison between the options. In most AoA studies, the focus is on discriminators, so being able to quickly identify and quantify them is extremely valuable to an analyst. Milestone estimates. Every major U.S. Navy acquisition program must go through a set of reviews (known as milestones) as it progresses toward procurement, to assess whether the program is on track and still in the best interest of the DOD. A full life -cycle cost estimate is required at each milestone. O&S costs are most dicult to estimate at milestone A when the program is just an idea of what will be built, but as the program matures through the mile -stone process and becomes more dened, the O&S costs become more dened. OSCAM is ideal for estimating throughout the milestone progression. When the program is less dened, the higher level (less detailed) inputs to the model are used. For example, at milestone A, it may only be known that the crew will be composed of 75 ocers and 300 enlisted crew members. However, as a program approaches milestone C, the crew composition is well known, and it is possible to use the same OSCAM model and enter the actual crew breakout by rank. A second part of the milestone process involves many iterations of what-if drills. What if the cost of fuel increases by $2 per barrel? What if the crew size is reduced by four ocers per platform? What if the service life of the platform is extended? e what-if drills become easy to execute with OSCAM, and the turnaround time on drills becomes minutes or hours rather than hours or days. Breakeven analysis. In cost estimating, breakeven analysis determines the point at which the cost of one option is overcome by the cost of a second option. is type of anal -ysis determines the point at which a return on investment will start to occur. OSCAM was used to conduct this type of analysis on a ship program that was compar -ing dierent types of propulsion, gas turbine versus nuclear. Navy leadership was inter -ested in how expensive conventional fuel had to become before the nuclear propul -sion option was less expensive. By including the development and procurement costs as throughputs (a facility in OSCAM for non- standard costs), the full lifecycle cost was modeled and the breakeven point could be determined. In Figure 4, the point at which the two lines intersect represents the notional breakeven point related to the passage of time. For the inputs used to gen -erate Figure 4, the costs of the two options will break even around the year 2032, or with a service life of at least 25 years. Once the breakeven point for the baseline point estimate was established, follow-on what-if drills about the break -even point at different fuel prices were easy to answer simply by entering a dif -ferent fuel price in the OSCAM fuel input and re-simulating OSCAM. e database structure used for the input data provides convenient and ecient storage for each of the fuel price scenarios, with quick and easy retrieval. Budgeting. Budgets are created for each scal year based on the mission require -ments for that year. OSCAM is ideal for creating budgets as the simulation model calculates each month of the program ser -vice life and reports the results by scal year. is creates a realistic cost estimate for each scal year, rather than a metric such as aver -age dollars per platform per year, which most spreadsheet models tend to use. Figure 5 shows the notional mainte -nance estimate for a program. As can be seen, the depot maintenance costs vary from year to year depending on the avail -ability schedule. Total ownership cost reductions. With the current emphasis throughout DOD on the total ownership cost of systems, OSCAM is a tool to help track potential cost reduc -tions. A submarine program is trying to create a model that will assist in evaluat -ing the cost impact of potential changes to the class maintenance plan. OSCAM can be used to create a baseline model of the class maintenance plan. Once the baseline is established, ship design-based changes will be made to dierent areas of the base -line, and OSCAM will calculate the potential cost impact in terms of labor and material for the proposed changes. OSCAM can help to identify the maintenance cost drivers and will assist the design team in focusing on the areas of maintenance reductions that will have the most ?bang for the buck.? Parametric cost tool (PCT) usage. Cost estimates are sometimes requested very early on in the concept formulation stage of a program. Because this is often a time when very little can be dened about the program, it can be dicult to develop a reasonable cost estimate. The uncertainty tool enables probability distributions (11 types) to be specied for any number of inputs.