Performance Based Supportability
Performance Based Supportability (PBS) is an effective solution to our industry's current requirement to do more with less by capitalizing on the streamlined business approaches of tomorrow. Developers of modern systems face challenging ownership and availability requirements, and need cost effective techniques for satisfying these requirements. PBS is a systematic approach to designing products and processes to meet discriminating customer requirements for affordable, available, and sustainable performance objectives. PBS addresses the entire system, including equipment, operator, and all logistic support elements by placing emphasis on supportability as a critical performance measure of the system.
If product support is important to your sales, PBS holds the key to satisfied customers. ALE can guide the key to unlock the future benefits for producers as well as customers. ALE can assist in the application of PBS throughout a commercial or government program to achieve success by placing the customer's true requirements at the heart of each major decision.
PBS is a continuous process throughout the program. The six steps of PBS are applied during all phases of the system's life. Throughout the PBS process, the system is defined to include both the traditional equipment needed to perform the required functions, as well as the logistic support elements necessary to operate and maintain the equipment over its life. The steps of PBS include:
- defining operational supportability requirements
- determination of design parameter support metrics
- control of design parameters
- design of the support capability
- acquire and operate support
- strive for continual improvement
These steps address supportability decision making that ranges from setting supportability performance requirements to upgrading or modifying existing products and processes to improve supportability performance.
ALE's successes in applying PBS include:
- reduction in ownership cost by 25% while simultaneously reducing unit cost
- reduced acquisition cost by reducing ILS related cost by 50%
- winning proposal for a multi-billion dollar program by successfully demonstrating how cost of ownership would be controlled