Return on Investment of Network Design Exchange (NDEX)

摘要

The purpose of this MBA Project was to investigate and provide a calculated Return on Investment (ROI) of a new ship alteration design process termed Network Design Exchange (NDEX). The project evaluated the differences between NDEX and the current system in use. Costs associated with the implementation and use of NDEX were contrasted to costs of the status quo design process to determine cost savings and benefits and compute the return on investment (ROI) of NDEX. NDEX changes the way C4I equipment is configured for installation onboard U.S. Navy ships. It is being beta tested on several different classes of ships. The current design process, although effective, is highly inefficient. It is an antiquated system that is labor intensive and uses manual drawings to design compartment utilization and ensure the proposed equipment to be installed will fit in the correct space allotted. The current process also takes a considerable amount of time, upwards of 18 months from start to finish, and requires many unnecessary steps to accomplish. The proposed system, NDEX, is based on commercially available software that will allow the creation of a ship's drawings on laptops using computer aided design (CAD) applications and class design baseline (CDB) drawings that show how a ship was configured at construction. With NDEX, design cycle time can be shortened to weeks if time criticality is necessary. NDEX allows a considerable amount of time to be saved by eliminating a lot of the redundant efforts in the current process. With NDEX, a laptop computer is brought to the site visit and drawings are made during the visit based on the class design baseline (CDB) drawings. A library of components are available (click and paste) that can be used to add equipment that is in the space but not shown on the CDB drawings. The value-added, or notional benefit, and the avoided costs realized by the investment in this new NDEX process are the focus of this ROI measurement.