ACHIEVING BALANCED SYSTEMS THROUGH STRUCTURED DECISIONS

To support customers during product development, General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) utilizes a set of Operations Research/Decision Support processes and tools to facilitate all levels of decision-making aimed at achieving a balanced system design. GDLS employs a rigorous Structured Decision (SD) process that allows for large, highly complex or strategic decisions to be made at the system-of-systems, system, and/or subsystem level. Powerful, robust tools -the Advanced Collaborative System Optimization Modeler (ACSOM) and Logical Decisions for Windows (LDW) - are used to make relatively quick assessments and provide recommendations. The latest ACSOM algorithms have increased the response time for trade study analysis by over 2,000 times and future versions will incorporate logistics analysis helping to reduce vehicle Life Cycle Cost.