TY - JOUR
T1 - A System-of-Systems Approach to the Strategic Feasibility of Modular Vehicle Fleets
AU - Bayrak, Alparslan Emrah
AU - Egilmez, M. Mert
AU - Kuang, Heng
AU - Li, Xingyu
AU - Park, Jong Min
AU - Umpfenbach, Edward
AU - Anderson, Erik
AU - Gorsich, David
AU - Hu, Jack
AU - Papalambros, Panos Y.
AU - Epureanu, Bogdan I.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2013 IEEE.
PY - 2020/7
Y1 - 2020/7
N2 - The value proposition for ground vehicle modularity in the U.S. Army and other services has been a topic of continuing debate. Studies to date have largely focused on individual system elements such as manufacturing or maintenance, lacking a holistic perspective of the implications of modularity for the entire fleet operation and life-cycle. The U.S. Army Science and Technology community has demonstrated the technical feasibility of large-scale, transformative ground vehicle modularity, but the business case for modularity remains incomplete. There are multiple criteria tradeoffs between modular and mission-specific (conventional) vehicle platforms, such as total life-cycle cost, mission utility, personnel requirements, and fleet adaptability. This paper presents a system-of-systems framework to address these tradeoffs to support high-level decisions on the strategic feasibility of ground vehicle modularity. We demonstrate this framework with a notional example and an application to the Joint Tactical Transport System (JTTS), a U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center demonstrator program. Under certain modeling assumptions with regards to the operation of a modular fleet, results for the JTTS study indicate that modularity can lead to significant cost savings at the expense of increased personnel requirements.
AB - The value proposition for ground vehicle modularity in the U.S. Army and other services has been a topic of continuing debate. Studies to date have largely focused on individual system elements such as manufacturing or maintenance, lacking a holistic perspective of the implications of modularity for the entire fleet operation and life-cycle. The U.S. Army Science and Technology community has demonstrated the technical feasibility of large-scale, transformative ground vehicle modularity, but the business case for modularity remains incomplete. There are multiple criteria tradeoffs between modular and mission-specific (conventional) vehicle platforms, such as total life-cycle cost, mission utility, personnel requirements, and fleet adaptability. This paper presents a system-of-systems framework to address these tradeoffs to support high-level decisions on the strategic feasibility of ground vehicle modularity. We demonstrate this framework with a notional example and an application to the Joint Tactical Transport System (JTTS), a U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center demonstrator program. Under certain modeling assumptions with regards to the operation of a modular fleet, results for the JTTS study indicate that modularity can lead to significant cost savings at the expense of increased personnel requirements.
KW - Modular vehicle
KW - modularity
KW - strategic feasibility
KW - systems-of-systems (SoSs)
KW - vehicle fleet
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U2 - 10.1109/TSMC.2018.2827387
DO - 10.1109/TSMC.2018.2827387
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85046351077
SN - 2168-2216
VL - 50
SP - 2716
EP - 2728
JO - IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems
JF - IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems
IS - 7
M1 - 8353438
ER -