Information availability at the competitive bidding stage for service contracts

Sustainable production and consumption have become more important internationally which has led to the transformation of market structures and competitive situations into the direction of servitisation [Baines et al., 2011; Bandinelli and Gamberi, 2011]. For a manufacturing company the shift towards being a service provider is characterised by a high level of uncertainty about the future strategic development of the company caused by e.g. inadequate knowledge and information [Song et al., 2007]. For this research, a service is defined as an activity or a process which is aimed at the change of the state of the service issue such as the repair of a machine or the supply of flying hours for an aircraft [Araujo and Spring, 2006; Gadrey, 2000]. [...continues]

Information display for decisions under uncertainty

In the early product design stage, considering the Through Life Cost and uncertainty are important. However, the information given to the decision maker is often limited, resulting in a large level of subjectivity. This paper introduces experimental research exploring different information displays and their subjective interpretation by cost forecasters within the defence and aerospace sector. Three different kinds of information display and different levels of detail of contextual information were tested, showing that they impact the decision making process and subjective interpretation

Manifestation of uncertainty - a classification

The aim of the research presented in this paper is to propose a classification of the manifestation of uncertainty to offer a basis for a shared understanding and characterization of the concept of uncertainty within the area of design research. During the past decade a growing number of papers about uncertainty have been published. These papers focus on different aspects and points of the design process and offer insights on different aspects of uncertainty. The research presented in this paper describes the manifestation of uncertainty and proposes a classification. The classification consists of context uncertainty arising from the situation circumstances, data uncertainty stemming from input information or data into a further process, model uncertainty resulting from the simplifications in models, and phenomenological uncertainty connected to the outcome of a process. Each of these categories is described in detail offering a basis for positioning specific research contributions published in previous ICED conferences. This offers a basis for the consideration of the appropriate uncertainty management methods

Approaches to displaying information to assist decisions under uncertainty

The estimation of the costs of a product or project and the decisions based on these forecasts are subject to much uncertainty relating to factors like unknown future developments. This has been addressed repeatedly in research studies focusing on different aspects of uncertainty; unfortunately, this interest has not yet been adopted in practice. One reason can be found in the inadequate representation of uncertainty. This paper introduces an experiment, which engages different approaches to displaying cost forecasting information to gauge the consideration of uncertainty in the subsequent decision-making process. Three different approaches of displaying cost-forecasting information including the uncertainty involved in the data were tested, namely a three point trend forecast, a bar chart, and a FAN-diagram. Furthermore, the effects of using different levels of contextual information about the decision problem were examined. The results show that decision makers tend to simplify the level of uncertainty from a possible range of future outcomes to the limited form of a point estimate. Furthermore, the contextual information made the participants more aware of uncertainty. In addition, the fan-diagram prompted 75.0% of the participants to consider uncertainty even if they had not used this type of diagram before; it was therefore identified as the most suitable method of graphical information display for encouraging decision makers to consider the uncertainty in cost forecasting

Stakeholder perspectives on the cost requirements of small modular reactors

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd The cost of a nuclear power plant (NPP) is an important influence on the future commercial success of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). At the early design stage, the cost requirements of SMRs can be derived from an analysis of the factors driving the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). It is often much later into the development process before customers are engaged and their cost requirements are known, by which time key design decisions which influence the lifecycle cost have already been locked-in. A clear understanding is required of the cost priorities for the key stakeholders who are to invest in the SMR. This paper presents a novel approach to ranking the relative importance of different cost factors used to calculate the LCOE. Using a dynamic stakeholder analysis, the key decision-makers for each stage of the SMR product lifecycle are identified. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with pair-wise comparisons obtained from nuclear cost experts is employed to rank the different factors in terms of their relative importance on the commercial success of a near-term deployable SMR. Each expert provides a different set of rankings, although project financing cost is consistently the most important for the successful commercial deployment of the SMR. The approach presented in this paper can be used as a verification method for any power generation technology to provide confidence that cost requirements are adequately captured to design for life cycle cost competitiveness from the perspective of different stakeholders

Competitive bidding for outcome based contracts – price to win?

The suppliers of long-life assets such as submarines and airplanes no longer simply sell these assets but provide advanced engineering services. In other words companies that traditionally designed and manufactured long-life products now compete through the provision of a service, such as asset availability. These companies face a high level of uncertainty due to the novelty of the process and the long-term nature of services. However, regardless of these uncertainties the service provider needs to estimate the cost and expected profits for such provision. The pricing decision of these service contracts is influenced by multiple factors and considerations and as a minimum the supplying contractor needs to yield suitable profit to sustain their business. From current research it is known that the estimated company profit is often optimistic. This places pressure on both the customer and the service provider. From our research we found examples of reductions in profits for those providing services. For example a company, which moved to performance-based road maintenance contracts, only yielded less than 50% of their expected profit. So, how can providers of long-life, high-value assets estimate the costs for delivering an expected outcome and account for the uncertainties? One of the challenges is measuring such uncertainties and taking account of them in the pricing decision. In this paper we present our research to date on the provision of a framework and a five-step process for modelling the influencing uncertainties and the impact of these uncertainties on the price bid. We will present the background need for such analysis and then provide an overview of our approach and findings to date. Finally, using an exemplar service we will demonstrate how using our approach highlights the probability of winning the contract, the probability of making a profit and the expected profit value for particular price bids

Fission possible: understanding the cost of nuclear power

The cost of nuclear power has been debated ever since the build of the first plant at Calder Hall. Despite crippling construction delays in the 1970s and 80s, nuclear new build is again considered to meet both future demand growth and CO2 reduction targets. UK suppliers could produce around 45% of the high value components, with the potential to enter international export markets. Initially estimated at £9bn, to £16bn after Fukushima, with the most recent estimate at £24.5bn, Hinkley Point C will be the pilot build for new nuclear. The question remains, can the UK build a nuclear power station economically? The research aims to provide a methodology for estimating the cost of future nuclear build projects. This paper will review cost drivers for historic nuclear build, prior to and after their construction. Based on this analysis the paper will critique the current methodology and provide direction for the research

Estimating cost at the conceptual design stage to optimize design in terms of performance and cost

In the highly competitive business environment, cost estimation is a strategic tool, which can be used to assist decision making with regard to products throughout their life cycle. 70 to 80 percent of the life-cycle costs of a product are determined by decision taken by designers during the early design stages. Therefore it is important to estimate and optimise cost as early and as accurately as possible. The main aim of this research is to use typically available information at the conceptual stage of design and estimate cost in order to optimise design in terms of performance and cost. The main objective is to employ Design of Experiments (Taguchi method) to use the sparse information more effectively in order to estimate the cost of a product at the early design stage. This paper presents the current status of the research activity. A case study is introduced which illustrates the initial applications of the optimization process. Conclusions are then discussed and the future research described

Cutting cost in service systems: are you running with scissors?

A rigorous link between the domains of cost estimation, systems theory, and accident investigation reveals fundamental epistemological limitations of commonly employed cost models when dealing with the characteristics of servitization systems

Uncertainty in through-life costing-review and perspectives

Estimating through-life cost (TLC) is an area that is critical to many industrial sectors, and in particular, within the defense and aerospace where products are complex and have extended life cycles. One of the key problems in modeling the cost of these products is the limited life-cycle information at the early stage. This leads to epistemic and aleatory uncertainty within the estimation process in terms of data, estimation techniques, and scenarios analysis. This paper presents a review of the uncertainty classification in engineering literature and the nature of uncertainty in TLC estimation. Based on the review, the paper then presents a critique of the current uncertaintymodeling approaches in cost estimation and concludes with suggestion for the requirement of a different approach to handling uncertainty in TLC. The potential value of imprecise probability should be explored within the domain of TLC to assist cost estimators and decision makers in understanding and assessing the uncertainty. The implication of such a representation in terms of decision making under risk and decision making under uncertainty is also discussed