Availability-based contracts which provide customers with the use of assets such as machines, ships, aircraft platforms or subsystems like engines and avionics are increasingly offered as an alternative to the purchase of an asset and separate support contracts. The cost of servicing a durable...

The benefits of Integrated enterprise-wide information systems (IS), such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, are widely accepted The implementation of such systems in large organisations is established with many in their second or third generation. However, in small to medium-sized...

Cost estimating is a business process that is critical to the defence sector, where many products have low volumes and long life cycles. The nature of a defence system is often unique (for example, a naval platform) which consists of a number of sub-systems and components. For the design of such...

Life Cycle Cost (LCC) is important information that is useful for decision making affecting complex engineering systems with extended life. Uncertainty in the estimation of LCC, especially in the early concept and definition stage, has great influence on the robustness of such decisions....