SBIR-STTR Award

Acquisition managers in Premilestone I Acquisition activities face the task of identifying, defining, adn selecting system concepts, and predicting which technologies will best support future acquisitions. A requirement exists for an automated tool which will gather and organize information, facilitate documentation of alternative concepts, tie the components of these alternatives to other information, and support prioritizing these concepts. LGA has developed an approach to automated planning for R&D organizations, called the Roadmap Information Management System (RIMS). RIMS provides graphical and hierarchical representations of user-defined concepts called Concept Roadmaps. The Concept Roadmaps permit decision makers to document current capabilities, goal capabilities, and subgoals that have to be accomplished to reach the goal. Alternative concepts are represented either as "alternate paths" in a single Roadmap or in separate Concept Roadmaps within a single roadmap set. Concept Roadmaps are tied to a database containing other decision-related information. We are proposing to modify the approach used for RIMS to support the additional requirements identified for military acquisition decision support. The proposed Military Acquisition Decision Support System (MADSS) will consist of Concept Roadmaps and linked databases augmented with expert systems to assist in setting priorities and deciding among alternatives.

Keywords:
DECISION SUPPORT TOOL EXPERT SYSTEMS ROADMAPS AUTOMATED DECISION SUPPORT CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

Technical Planning Integrated Product Teams (TPIPT) were introduced to respond to requirements for traceability among requirements generation, acquisition management, and planning. During the TPIPT process, planners must receive, store, organize and analyze a substantial body of complex information. The analysis process itself generates additional information. Finally all of the information must be integrated into an investment strategy, which is traceable to the original input and to a defensible and reproducible analytical process. Because there are no applications currently available that include all the capabilities needed, and most tasks are performed manually. The volume of information and the complexity of the task, however, point to the need for automated capabilities for data management and decision support. The technical goal for our Phase II effort is to implement an integrated application that supports and facilitates the procurement process. The application will be easy to use and cost-effective to operate and maintain. It will support the following tasks: designing the data structure and entering data, analyzing data; making decisions; building group consensus; reporting; and reviewing and evaluating decisions The proposed system uses a commercial data base as part of its infrastructure and incorporates functionality from both accepted and innovative decision support approaches.