A cost-benefit forecasting framework for assessment of advanced manufacturing technology development

摘要

Development of new Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) for the aerospace industry is critical toenhance the manufacture and assembly of aerospace products. These novel AMTs require high developmentcost, specialist resource capabilities, have long development periods, high technological risks and lengthypayback durations. This forms an industry reluctance to fund the initial AMT development stages, impacting ontheir success within an ever increasingly competitive environment.Selection of suitable AMTs for development is typically performed by managers who make little reference toestimating the non-recurring development effort in resources and hardware cost. In addition, the performance atthe conceptual stage is predicted using expert opinion, consisting of subjective and inaccurate outputs. AMTsselected are then submerged into development research and heavily invested in, with incorrect selections havinga detrimental impact on the business.A detailed study of the UK aerospace manufacturing industry corroborated these findings and revealed arequirement for a new process map to resolve the problem of managing AMT developments at the conceptualstages. This process map defined the final research protocol, forming the requirement for a Cost-BenefitForecasting Framework. The framework improves the decision making process to select the most suitableAMTs for development, from concept to full scale demonstration. Cost is the first element and is capable ofestimating the AMT development effort in person-hours and cost of hardware using two parametric cost models.Benefit is the second element and forecasts the AMT tangible and intangible performance. The framework plotsthese quantified cost-benefit parameters and is capable of presenting development value advice for a diverserange of AMTs with varied applications. A detailed case study is presented evaluating a total of 23 novelaerospace AMTs verifying the capability and high accuracy of the framework within a large aerospacemanufacturing organisation. Further validation is provided by quantifying the responses from 10 AMTdevelopment experts, after utilising the methodology within an industrial setting. The results show thatquantifying the cost-benefit parameters provides manufacturing research and technology with the ability toselect AMTs that provide the best value to a business.