Right-Sizing the Spares Budget
Systecon helped an Australian defence customer validate a vendor-recommended spares package for a new aviation fleet in just two weeks. Using OPUS10, the team tested the recommendation against real fleet performance data, explored reuse and procurement trade-offs, and gave the acquisition project a defensible, data-backed spares budget for the early years of sustainment.
Background
An Australian defence customer was replacing an ageing aviation fleet with new-build, updated versions of the same platform. As part of the acquisition, the vendor had supplied a recommended spares package. But a recommendation alone is not a justification. Before committing budget, the customer needed to validate that recommendation against the operational reality of its existing fleet.
Action Taken
Drawing on change documentation from the acquisition programme and performance data from the in-service fleet, Systecon built an OPUS10 model in two weeks. The model tested the vendor's spares recommendation and explored the trade-offs a static recommendation cannot capture:
- The impact of reusing high-value items from the existing fleet versus selling them on.
- How varying the daily requirement for available systems, set against systems held in deeper maintenance, changed the total spares budget.
- The differences between the existing fly-away kits and those the new systems would require.
Outcome
The analysis gave the acquisition project the evidence to:
- Validate, and where necessary adjust, the vendor's spares recommendation.
- Build a more optimal budget profile for spares procurement.
- Set realistic budget levels for the materiel component handed to the sustainment programme office for years one and two of operations.
In two weeks, the project moved from accepting a recommendation on trust to owning a spares budget it could defend with data, and carried that confidence forward into the early years of sustainment.