IMPROVE EFFICIENCY THROUGH LIFE CYCLE ANAYSIS

A.D. Achlama offers consulting services and software tools to help customers improve their effectiveness through focusing on the total cost of ownership.

Nowadays, product complexity has increased support costs for both the product vendor and the customer.  This and the higher standards of safety and control led to an increased interest in concepts of product lifecycle management.  PLM methods and solutions are especially important in such industries as aerospace, medical device, military and nuclear, and are being employed by defense departments and companies in support of economic and strategic decisions.  However, the model of reality behind the PLM approach is complex. Hence, its true potential may be realized only through the use of equally powerful modeling tools.

A.D. Achlama develops, markets and supports Annabelle - the most advanced and powerful software available for evaluating requirements and performance of complex systems, such as defense systems, communications systems, transportation systems and industrial plants. Using this tool and an accumulated modeling expertise, A.D. Achlama provides solutions and ROI improving suggestions based on the analysis of an entire product life cycle or of a subset of its phases. Thus, when comparing design alternatives, supportability issues may be taken into account.  This is done through modeling and simulation of the total life cycle of a product, producing estimates for both the performance and the associated cost for each configuration considered.  Moreover, such an analysis brings about an insight into the relations between design parameters, product performance and associated costs, such as: choice of components and designed redundancies versus system reliability and cost, dependence of a system’s repair time upon the ease of access and component replacement times, an effect of a built-in test upon the detectability of failures and ensuing availability of a system.

Another example involves a product support task with the following typical questions: What is the best number of support centers? What is the optimal number of spare parts? What is the best frequency and level of inspection? What kind and timing of preventive maintenance would result in better ROI or availability of the system? When does the system have to be decommissioned and replaced by a newer one?   Questions like these are numerous and the ability to provide the correct answers is instrumental for improving the performance of a company or a defense organization.  A.D. Achlama has such ability due to its specific modeling and simulation approach focused on the domain of systems engineering.

Using this potential A.D. Achlama offers a variety of services in various phases of a system's life:   Assistance in evaluation of contracts Project management within availability, logistics support and life cycle cost. Product design support with emphasis on the system’s supportability. Prediction of the system’s time-dependent availability and of other performance measures. Spare parts and resource optimization. Improvement of maintenance strategies. A.D. Achlama helps customers to establish a better relation between the operational performance and the total life cycle cost of a system.  It is done with various levels of co-operation with the customer depending on the customer’s preferences and policies. Our experience shows that the gains from a genuine life cycle analysis far outweigh the costs of conducting any modeling project.