Development of a framework for obsolescence resolution cost estimation

Currently, manufacturing organisations worldwide are shifting their businessmodels towards Product-Service Systems (PSS), which implies thedevelopment of new support agreements such as availability-based contracts.This transition is shifting the responsibilities for managing and resolvingobsolescence issues from the customer to the prime contractor and industrywork share partners. This new scenario has triggered a new need to estimatethe Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) cost of resolving obsolescence issues atthe bidding stage, so it can be included in the support contract. Hence, the aimof this research is to develop an understanding about all types of obsolescenceand develop methodologies for the estimation of NRE costs of hardware(electronic, electrical and electromechanical (EEE) components and materials)obsolescence that can be used at the bidding stage for support contracts in thedefence and aerospace sectors.For the accomplishment of this aim, an extensive literature review of the relatedthemes to the research area was carried out. It was found that there is a lack ofmethodologies for the cost estimation of obsolescence, and also a lack ofunderstanding on the different types of obsolescence such as materials andsoftware obsolescence. A systematic industrial investigation corroborated thesefindings and revealed the current practice in the UK defence sector for costestimation at the bidding stage, obsolescence management and obsolescencecost estimation. It facilitated the development of an understanding aboutobsolescence in hardware and software. Further collaboration with experts frommore than 14 organisations enabled the iterative development of the EEEFORCEand M-FORCE frameworks, which can be used at the bidding stage ofsupport contracts to estimate the NRE costs incurred during the contractedperiod in resolving obsolescence issues in EEE components and materials,respectively. These frameworks were implemented within a prototype softwareplatform that was applied to 13 case studies for expert validation.