Sustaining Engineering Funding Analysis

Customer: US Air Force Headquarters Air Combat Command (ACC)

Challenge: Headquarters Air Combat Command programs and executes Sustaining Engineering funding to ensure readiness and availability of aircraft, weapons, mission systems and support equipment. Because the existing Sustaining Engineering prioritization process lacked substance and was not standardized, funding needs were difficult to defend in allocation processes. This resulted in Sustaining Engineering being consistently under-funded from initial distribution and an easy target for current year cuts/taxes.

Approach/Methodology: WBB presented with a proposal to change the current Sustaining Engineering process to a more clearly defined, defendable process using Decision Support methodologies that include Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Linear Programming Optimization through Team Expert Choice™ (TEC) software tools. Decision Support processes and the associated software tools were employed to provide ACC decision-makers with the information and analytical data. To accomplish this, WBB:

• Formulated a single Sustaining Engineering AHP model to be applied to all Combat Air Force (CAF) systems.
• Analytically derived task priorities using that AHP model and employing TEC for each system category.
• Optimized solutions by weapon system category.
• Applied prioritization and optimization solutions to recommend a programming and execution strategy.
• Updated prioritization model and process results for future years use.

Value: Headquarters ACC was given the tools to make more informed decisions that would optimize the benefit and more appropriately allocate limited resources for Sustaining Engineering requirements. Program managers now had both quantitative and qualitative information to demonstrate the merits of each alternative. WBB provided ACC with a structured and auditable process to prioritizing alternatives.