Original Date: 08/07/1995
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems (LMTAS) is instituting a new system to perform design cost analysis and improve on its existing capability. The objective of the effort is to develop a tool set that will provide an integrated approach to bringing all aspects of costing such as engineering, material, and manufacturing together through a central interface. The system could be used to provide an audit trail for identification of cost drivers, perform cost trades throughout the design/development cycle with continually improving quality and turnaround, and provide design/manufacturing guidance based on accurate cost projections.

A benchmarking study, completed in 1994, investigated existing systems and determined that the Cost Advantage System by Cognition offered the best available solution. The Cost Advantage system is a knowledge-based expert system shell offering flexibility in model construction from very high level data to extreme detail. The system architecture is structured around the knowledge base in two sections -- a builder section and a user section. The builder section is constructed around a user-friendly, natural-language interface with easy-to-follow forms that guide the user through the model construction process. The system includes an inference engine that can associate tolerances with functions that allow constructing knowledge bases based on operations.

The system is being developed around Cost Assessment Program for Structures, and Producibility and Cost Analysis System. The approach is to use the Cognition Cost Advantage software to capture various manufacturing process knowledge and associated cost for various part families and their features.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.