REDUCING DETAIL DESIGN and CONSTRUCTION WORK CONTENT BY COST-EFFECTIVE DECISIONS IN EARLY STAGE NAVAL SHIP DESIGN

摘要

The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L)rnrecently presented analyses of cost and schedule growth on Major Defense AcquisitionrnPrograms (MDAPs) over the last 20 years (2013, 2014). For naval ships, AT&L (2013) concludedrnthat contract work content growth (not capability growth) dominates total cost growthrnstatistically. In addition, costs-over-target are significant and reflect poor cost estimation orrnfaulty framing assumptions. AT&L (2014) also concluded prices on fixed-price contracts are onlyrn“fixed” if the contractual work content remains fixed, but this is often not the case. The authorsrnshow that under-sizing the ship during concept design studies increases ship outfit density andrnadds complexities to the design. These early stage design decisions on sizing the ship are arnmajor contributor to unnecessary work content growth later in Detail Design and Constructionrn(DD&C) that cannot be eliminated no matter how productive the shipbuilder. However, newrnship design methods are being developed and integrated with legacy physics-based design andrnanalysis tools into a Rapid Ship Design Environment (RSDE) that will enable a more rationalrnprocess for initially sizing ships. The authors also identify the need for early stage designrnmeasures of complexity and ship costing tools that are more sensitive to these measures, andrnpropose solutions that will aid decision-makers in reducing DD&C work content by making costeffectiverndesign decisions in early stage naval ship design.