Abstract
This chapter presents systems engineering as portfolio analysis carried out with multiple stakeholders who hold different perspectives about the system elements, and where conflicting objectives must be accommodated in deciding what is affordable. A case study of the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer shows how a portfolio approach traded-off time, cost and performance to arrive at a plausible way forward. The combination of technical system modelling with group processes that engaged all stakeholders enabled a solution to be agreed within only 15 months. This set a record for major equipment procurement in the Ministry of Defence, and saved the contractor 2 years of design work.
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- 1.
Developed initially by the Decision Analysis Unit at the London School of Economics, Equity is now available from Catalyze Limited, http://www.catalyze.co.uk. Equity is used to prioritise options across many areas to create cost-effective portfolios than can inform the processes of budgeting and resource allocation.
- 2.
See Section 2.7.2, “The Utility of a Probability Distribution.”
- 3.
Hiview is used for evaluating options on many criteria. Like Equity, it is a commercial product available from Catalyze Limited, http://www.catalyze.co.uk.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Malcolm Cree and the editors for helpful suggestions that improved the manuscript. I also belatedly thank the many participants in the decision conferences, particularly Commander Dean Molyneaux and Lieutenant Commander Bill Biggs, who assisted in facilitating the decision conferences, Commodore Philip Greenish, who ably led participants through the tangled web of conflicting objectives, Brigadier General Keith Prentiss, who continued to exert pressure on costs, and Captain Joe Kidd, Captain Joe Gass and Commander Malcolm Cree, who championed the process from the start and saw it through to the final propulsion decision conference.
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Phillips, L.D. (2011). The Royal Navy’s Type 45 Story: A Case Study. In: Salo, A., Keisler, J., Morton, A. (eds) Portfolio Decision Analysis. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, vol 162. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9943-6_3
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