Nils E. Thenent

System Modeling: A Foundation for Costing Through-Life Availability Provision

Under performance-guaranteeing contracts, such as availability-based contracts, the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) have become increasingly concerned with understanding and managing the cost of their commitment to deliver specific results to customer through-life. However, current approaches to cost estimating hardly offer more than sheer claims of the existence of a link between cost and organizational performance – no matter whether products, services or product-service-systems (PSS) are at stake. This paper presents an intermediate step towards a computational structure explicitly linking cost and performance for PSS. A PSS is represented formally as a system combining assets and activities delivering the results OEMs are committed to through-life. Inter-temporal aspects of PSS provision which typically define the successful delivery of an asset’s availability are taken into account. Network formalism and principles derived from Input-Output Analysis are employed to base PSS cost estimation on a representation of a PSS as a ‘system’.

A Case Study in Estimating Avionics Availability from Field Reliability Data

Under incentivized contractual mechanisms such as availability-based contracts the support service provider and its customer must share a common understanding of equipment reliability baselines. Emphasis is typically placed on the Information Technology-related solutions for capturing, processing and sharing vast amounts of data. In the case of repairable fielded items scant attention is paid to the pitfalls within the modelling assumptions that are often endorsed uncritically, and seldom made explicit during field reliability data analysis. This paper presents a case study in which good practices in reliability data analysis are identified and applied to real-world data with the aim of supporting the effective execution of a defence avionics availability-based contract. The work provides practical guidance on how to make a reasoned choice between available models and methods based on the intelligent exploration of the data available in practical industrial applications.

To cost an elephant: an exploratory survey on cost estimating practice in the light of product-service-systems

Businesses now contracting for availability are regarded as part of a paradigm shift away from the familiar ‘product and support’ business model. The main difference being that such businesses eventually commit to provide a service outcome via product-service-system. The research presented in this article investigates how current cost estimating practice relates with the idea of having as the point of focus for the analysis a product-service-system delivering service outcomes, rather than a product. Since the topic is in its infancy, an exploratory survey was designed and circulated via the Internet among practitioners with the aim of looking for initial patterns, ideas, and hypotheses, rather than to confirm existing ones. The picture that seems to emerge is that respondents would not necessarily see the representation and modeling of a product-service-system as being a precondition to estimate the cost of the service it provides. In line with most academic literature, respondents would rather consider the cost of providing a service via product-service-system as conceptually equivalent to the cost of the in-service stage of a durable product. Although not allowing for generalization, this research reveals paths that may be worth exploring further.

Adapting the SHEL model in investigating industrial maintenance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and categorise problems in knowledge management of industrial maintenance, and support successful maintenance through adapting the SHEL model. The SHEL model has been used widely in airplane accident investigations and in aviation maintenance, but not in industrial maintenance. Design/methodology/approach – The data were collected by two separate surveys with open-ended questions from maintenance customers and service providers in Finland. The collected data were coded according to SHEL model -derived themes and analysed thematically with NVivo. Findings – The authors found that the adapted SHELO model works well in the industrial maintenance context. The results show that the most important knowledge management problems in the area are caused by interactions between Liveware and Software (information unavailability), Liveware and Liveware (information sharing), Liveware and Organisation (communication) and Software and Software (information integrity). R...

Applying forgotten lessons in field reliability data analysis to performance-based support contracts

Abstract Assumptions used in field reliability data analysis may be seldom made explicit or questioned in practice, yet these assumptions affect how engineering managers develop metrics for use in long-term support contracts. To address this issue, this article describes a procedure to avoid the pitfalls in employing the results of field data analysis for repairable items. The procedure is implemented with the aid of a simplified example based on a real case study in defense avionics and is streamlined so that the computations can be replicated in other applications.

Addressing Uncertainty in Estimating the Cost for a Product-Service-System Delivering Availability: Epistemology and Ontology

Recently there has been increase in the number of manufacturing firms offering service packages in support of their products, through performance-based or availability contracts. The delivery of “advanced services” by product-service-systems (PSS) is a knowledge-intensive socio-technical system in nature. Nonetheless, the challenges associated with addressing uncertainty in the context of estimating the cost of a PSS delivering availability need to be overcome. We present a system-based approach and discuss the uncertainties in modelling cost for a PSS. The aim is to demonstrate the limitations of using only quantitative analysis for modelling the uncertainty in estimating the cost of providing an advance service. Building on the epistemological foundation, we then discuss uncertainty in the context of ontology modelling and conclude with final remarks and directions for future research.