A System-of-Systems Approach to the Strategic Feasibility of Modular Vehicle Fleets

Alparslan Emrah Bayrak, M. Mert Egilmez, Heng Kuang, Xingyu Li, Jong Min Park, Edward Umpfenbach, Erik Anderson, David Gorsich, Jack Hu, Panos Y. Papalambros, Bogdan I. Epureanu

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    4 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    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.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number8353438
    Pages (from-to)2716-2728
    Number of pages13
    JournalIEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems
    Volume50
    Issue number7
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Jul 2020

    Keywords

    • Modular vehicle
    • modularity
    • strategic feasibility
    • systems-of-systems (SoSs)
    • vehicle fleet

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