Showing papers on "Technical performance measure published in 2014"

The Development of Progress Plans Using a Performance-Based Expert Judgment Model to Assess Technical Performance and Risk

Abstract: Systems engineers are routinely tasked with facilitating the delicate balance between cost, schedule, and technical performance in acquisition programs that are continuously subjected to various outside influences. While there are several quantitative methods to estimate acquisition program cost and schedule performance as well as identify their risks e.g., Earned Value Management, the estimation of technical performance and technical risk is generally heuristic in nature. In order to monitor the progress of the technical aspects of an acquisition program, the systems engineering discipline utilizes the process of tracking Technical Measures to gain insight into the design and development, to assess risks and issues, and to evaluate the likelihood of realizing objectives. However, with the diversity of so many technical programs, the estimation and risk analysis of technical performance in technology acquisition programs rely on the opinions of experts because the identification and application of relevant quantitative data for constructive modeling is not practical. The Expert-weighted Technical Risk Index methodology proposed in this article introduces a well-established method for mathematically combining expert judgment into the realm of systems engineering to develop predictive progress plans for technical performance estimation and risk analysis. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 17

Incorporating a Measure of Uncertainty into Systems of Systems Development Performance Measures

Abstract: Technical Performance Measures TPMs historically are used to help the Program Manager in predicting if a program is on a path to achieve required performance. When extended over a developmental timeline, TPMs have provided a deterministic approach for predicting expected operational performance. However, TPMs are difficult to derive for a complex acknowledged system of systems SoS. An SoS Performance Measure SPM has been developed that is equivalent in purpose to TPMs and demonstrated for a deterministic state similar to TPM usage. However, reality indicates that many of the SoS component variables have significant uncertainty associated with them during the SoS development. Therefore, to more accurately account for the ability of an SoS to achieve its desired performance, this variability needs to be accounted for. This paper extends the deterministic SPM concept to a stochastic SPM to account for this uncertainty. An Antisubmarine Warfare ASW mission example is used, and demonstrates how this extension improves the effectiveness of the SPM methodology.

Maintenance Commitments and Goals

Abstract: Goals and social commitments, respectively, capture agents’ behavior and interactions. In this technical report we propose a theoretical framework that unifies these constructs with regard to maintenance and facilitates effective cooperation between agents. Our contribution is threefold. (1) We formulate maintenance commitments as a construct in their own right, distinct from achievement commitments to complex temporal formulas. (2) We show how achievement and maintenance commitments and goals can be composed, and give pragmatic patterns of reasoning. (3) We develop an operational semantics that describes the interplay between maintenance commitments and goals. We illustrate our approach on a real-world scenario drawn from the aerospace aftermarket business service domain.

Modeling a decisional framework by MDMs

Abstract: Systems Engineers experience recurrent decisions on the same Technical Performance Measures, TPMs, during the overall systems life-cycle. The availability of a coherent decision framework allows identifying, implementing and evaluating effectiveness of the resulting Verification Validation and Testing strategy. It supports continuous improvement of the system and sustainable human factors integration. This paper proposes an application of Multi Domain Matrices in order to model the key aspects of repetitive decisions on the same TPM during the system life-time. It highlights how to manage evaluation, a coherent and effective decision process. The prior and quantitative evidences are updated by new evidences into the posterior and qualitative ones. The advantages and the cons of the selected approach in terms of representation, knowledge increase, sharing and evaluation are discussed.