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1.4.3 Estimating and Optimizing System's Quality Costs of Transport Helicopter Avionic System Upgrade
Author(s) -
Engel Avner,
Shachar Shalom,
Bogomolni Itzhak
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
incose international symposium
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2334-5837
DOI - 10.1002/j.2334-5837.2005.tb00662.x
Subject(s) - quality costs , quality (philosophy) , upgrade , operations management , business , risk analysis (engineering) , computer science , engineering , cost control , philosophy , epistemology , operating system
This paper depicts IAI's real‐life experience in estimating and optimizing system's quality costs associated with upgrading a transport helicopters' avionic system. This pilot project was conducted at Lahav, the military aircraft division of the Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) in conjunction with the SysTest project. SysTest was a European Commission R&D project chartered with developing a systems Verification, Validation and Testing (VVT) methodology and a process model for estimating product lifecycle cost, risk, quality, time, etc. The SysTest endeavor and IAI's pilot project are described briefly. Thereafter, the paper presents a case study where the overall quality costs are estimated based on the current VVT strategy established at Lahav/IAI. Our findings showed that the actual performance of VVT process amounted to 34% of the quality costs. The appraisal risk cost (expected cost associated with the detection of defects during the VVT process) amounted to 6%. Notably, the impact risk cost (cost emanated from not performing VVT as part of the VVT strategy) amounted to 60% of the quality costs. At the same time, a significantly improved VVT strategy, reducing the cost of quality by over 25%, is readily available. Our conclusion is that the current VVT strategy at Lahav/IAI is clearly not a most efficient one. Less cost‐effective VVT activities are performed at too high a performance level and visa versa. We assert that systems' VVT is performed at many organizations based on “engineering intuition” and, plainly, this is not a good yardstick. We are currently starting to apply a formal VVT optimization methodology in a large IAI program, developing a state of the art communication satellite.