System Capability Satisficing in Defense Acquisition via Element Importance Measures

Abstract

Under the direction of the Principal Investigators and support from the Naval Postgraduate School and government/industry partnerships, the Systems Development & Maturity Laboratory at Stevens Institute of Technology has successfully developed a system maturity measure (i.e. System Readiness Level [SRL])and supporting optimization models for inclusion in a System Earned Readiness Management methodology. At this point in the research program, it is necessary to spiral back to the beginning of the original development of the SRL to enhance fundamental capabilities of assessing system maturity in order to address some recurring issues to its application as described to the research team in our many interactions with industry, government and academia. That is, a system has variants in its physical architecture that realize certain functionality and capability by which trade off decisions are made to find a satisficing solution for a deployable system. This report summarizes the results of these efforts to enhance the previously developed methodologies by addressing this fundamental question, What are the effects of necessary trade offs in functionality, capability, cost, schedule, and maturity, that will allow the acquisition of a system that can still satisfy a warfighter's needs? The end product is an enhanced SRL and a supporting methodology that will facilitate more informed acquisition decisions that can reduce risk in acquiring immature systems.