Design-to-Cost. From Buzzword to Necessity.

摘要

The purpose of this report is to describe DTC from its inception and introduction into the defense systems acquisition process. It demonstrates that DTC is a management concept for early identification and control of costs that requires cost to be a design parameter equal in importance with performance and schedule. The project results clearly demonstrate that DTC is not another buzzword but rather a sine-qua-non of all future DOD major programs. The implications of the results to potential users are that DTC will be implemented on all programs in all phases that it is applicable, and to be successful, it must be tailored to each application. Inherent to its success is the flexibility to perform the cost-performance trade-offs and design iterations necessary to identify cost as a system parameter and control it.