A prediction system for assessing customer affordability of whole life cycle cost in defence industry

The manufacturing, delivery and support of service contracts in defence aerospace industry require a high financial investment. It is essential that the customer has the financial ability to procure and support the contract from the conceptual and manufacturing phase to the end of the project given the budget constraints. The aim of this paper is to identify the factors that affect customer affordability of defence contracts and develop a customer affordability assessment framework which is implemented as a software prototype system. Two major quantitative factors and twelve qualitative factors were identified, out which seven factors (identified as the major factors) were included within the customer affordability system. Following the identification of factors and development of measures for each, suggested actions to improve customer affordability were also proposed. The research methodology combined both case study and literature review approach with industrial collaboration in the customer affordability system development. The customer affordability system was validated through collaboration with industrial partners and a case study from defence sector and the results showed that the customer affordability system was capable of providing a good assessment of customer affordability.

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