TABLE OF CONTENTS A system that is successful must achieve a balance among performance, support, and cost of ownership. Systems architecting and system engineering historically focused primarily on performance, with cost of ownership being a secondary concern. Support was viewed as a requirement that could be determined only after the system was in operation. This philosophical view limited the consideration of support issues during system design and acquisition. Today systems architecting and systems engineering must give supportability an equal, and possibly greater, importance. Supportability engineering is responsible for actively participating with the systems architecting and systems engineering processes to attain a balance between performance, support and cost of ownership throughout development and acquisition. The traditional term for this activity is influencing design decisions to improve supportability and lower cost of ownership.
Supportability engineering activities are interwoven with those of reliability, maintainability, and testability. It is often difficult to determine where the actions of one discipline stop and another starts. This is the way it should be. Producing a supportable system requires a joint effort by all organizations. They must work together as a team, each team member having a stated role in the overall objectives of the group. As stated previously, supportability is defined as follows:
Supportability A prediction or measure of the characteristics of an item that facilitate the ability to support and sustain its mission capability within a predefined environment and usage profile.
For something to be predicted or measured, it must be intrinsically...
