Industrial Base Analysis for Support Equipment. Phase 1.

Abstract : Phase 1 of the Industrial Base Analysis for Support Equipment (SE) has as its objective to propose a solution to the problems faced by SE managers who struggle daily with difficulties of price, cost, planning, control, and performance of SE without fast, easy access to useful information. The solution we suggest for improving the technical aspect of the SE acquisition process uses Group Technology (GT) to identify and organize SE information in a way that will improve decision making by all personnel - in industry and in government - associated with the SE acquisition process. The GT approach works by grouping related items into families based on similarities, and differentiating items according to specified distinctions. Once organized, the information can be loaded into a database and made available to end users in design, manufacturing, and management through user-friendly decision support systems (DSS). Users would be able to access and manipulate data as they need to , thereby improving the acquisition of support equipment throughout a weapon system's life cycle by the effective use of technical information: Keywords: aerospace industry; standardization; relational data base; computer aided design; computer aided manufacturing; systems analysis.