Industrial Base Sustainment through Risk Modeling with Model-Based Systems Engineering Applications

There is evidence to suggest that before military equipment ever experiences sustainment delays the equipment carries state patterns within its logistics and supply chain data history that could be leveraged for risk mitigation. Analysis of these patterns can also identify new research & development (R&D) and technology transition candidates that relate the seemingly disparate activities of R&D project management and Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages (DMSMS) management. Relating eligible R&D activities to the DMSMS risk identification phase helps stage potential sustainment risk mitigations ahead of time on the one hand, while creating additional demand and resources to mature prototypes on the other hand. Virtually generating DMSMS-linked, R&D classifications can help throughput and productivity analysts simulate a pipeline of annual research projects, so decision makers can better understand where resource constraints reside within the project management process. The paper concludes with an application that: 1) integrates lean principles into the daily management of a government agency or business, while 2) demonstrating how the parametric orchestration of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software tools, via model-based systems engineering (MBSE), could be the key to the lean office of the future.