Cost-Benefit Study of a Project to Lower Cost and Improve Fleet Readiness through Integrating the Management of Technical Information
Abstract
This paper describes a cost-benefit analysis by the Institute for Defense Analyses of the "Bridge Project" that ADL (Advanced Distributed Learning) is conducting for the Office of Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (OSD(AT&L)) to improve the management of Integrated Logistics Support (ILS). The Project is part of the OSD RTOC program (Reduction in Total Ownership Cost). The Bridge Project focuses on integrating (Bridging) the management and production of technical manuals and training courses. The benefits would be lower cost to produce these manuals and courses in the future, and improved readiness through insuring the delivery of consistent and up-to-date logistics support to the Fleet. Manuals and courses are currently produced by entirely separate processes. Tech writers and course developers obtain contractor data on systems and equipments in parallel they express the information in different formats, they organize the data in different structures, and they store the data in different repositories. Cost is therefore higher because of duplication of resources and the difficulties in re-using data. The lack of integration can also reduce readiness, since it opens up the possibility that the tech manuals and training courses present disparate information, thus depriving ship operators and maintainers of the most effective support. The Bridge Project seeks to relieve these problems by designing new software technical and business processes to integrate the production of technical manuals and training courses. All technical and learning content would be expressed by the same digital specification.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2010
- Accession Number
- ADA530172
Entities
People
- Dan Levine
Organizations
- Institute for Defense Analyses