Downloaded from https://www.everyspec.com MIL-HDBK-502: A MIL-HDBK-502: A CQUISITION CQUISITION L OGISTICS OGISTICS significant investment in the materiel asset, ensure that provisions for future technology insertion are considered. In determining the most cost effective means of support, the service life of a product will be a factor in the decision to use contractor versus organic support. Further, the longer the anticipated service life, the greater the need for planned product upgrades to maintain currency of capability and to reduce support costs by using current technology.
Maintaining a support capability for outdated technology is expensive and limits opportunities to use contractor support because the number of sources that can support the older technology reduce dramatically as it is replaced with new technology . Standardization and interoperability Standardization and interoperability are primary sources of design requirements and constraints for a system. The difference between requirements and constraints can be a pretty fine line. And while it does not really matter as long as the need is correctly stated, generally, requirements are used to define acceptable solutions and constraints to limit them.
Interoperability with other systems and equipment may lead to standardization opportunities in both functional or physical design efforts. A functional standardization requirement is one which establishes the need for a particular capability such as transmitting a specified signal frequency. The hardware design, in that case, would not be restricted to a single solution. A physical standardization constraint, on the other hand, which imposes the use of a specific transmitter, dictates that portion of the system design. Standardization requirements are also derived from the software and support system design concepts.
Mission software standardization needs may dictate the use of compatible computer hardware, operating software, or program languages. Support standardization could include standardization of the support concept with the support concepts of other operational systems, or the use of specific support resources. An organic support concept, for example, might lead to specific hardware testability requirements ensuring diagnostic support by existing test equipment, or a requirement to perform field level maintenance with existing tools.
Synthesis The outcome of the FA/A segment should be supportability constraints that are the basis for developing initial supportability requirements expressed as thresholds (minimum acceptable value) and objectives (desired value). The spread between objective and threshold values will be individually set for each program based on the characteristics of the program (e.g., maturity, risk, etc.). The range between the objective and the threshold is known as 5-5