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Troy's Munro Helps DoD Understand And Cut Cost, Complexity

Troy-based Munro & Associates Inc., which reverse-engineers and analyzes products and industrial processes, Thursday announced a contract with the Department of Defense Manufacturing Science and Technology Program and Air Force Research Laboratory, Manufacturing Technology Division.

The contract is titled "Producibility Modeling during the Acquisition Process for Cost and Complexity Reduction."

"This project will leverage over 22 years that we have worked in this field to benefit the taxpayers," said Joe Feord, vice president of business development at Munro. "Producibility modeling to reduce cost and complexity has been a niche field that is finally getting mainstream attention. The trick is to start thinking about production first and foremost as the prime driver early and throughout development. This is contrary to how engineers typically think since we are taught 'Form, Fit, and Function.' In order to get different results we have to make some changes. So this project is important to apply and demonstrate tools and methods to enable significant change in how to approach development."

The project will research the DoD acquisition phases and determine how producibility modeling can be deployed throughout the various phases. It will leverage Munro's experience and existing modeling tools, Design Profit to demonstrate that producibility modeling does reduce complexity and cost. Munro will create an "Affordability and Producibility (AP) Roadmap" that will guide programs on the use and application for affordability and producibility modeling, and tailor the DP tools with a "Producibility Confidence Index" that will be a standardized metric to compare design alternatives based on design elegance, complexity, manufacturing readiness, cost, value, suppliers, and other relevant metrics.

"This is a really interesting topic because it's cutting-edge scientific thinking that changes the dynamics around defense programs," said David Foreman, vice president in charge of the Design Profit tools. "It's difficult because there are so many variables involved in defense programs. But since we already have metrics and experience that predict and track complexity, cost, manufacturing readiness levels, quality and other factors, we can create a mathematical formula that will provide an overall comparable index. Putting it all together into an AP Roadmap and a Producibility Confidence Index will be huge for DoD programs. It's exciting!"

Munro & Associates offers predictive tools, metrics and methods to expose drivers of potential downstream problems, provide direction for designing out high-cost drivers, generate standardized metrics for early trade-off analyses, and manage the details of producibility through the development lifecycle. More at www.leandesign.com.

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