The economics of diagnostics and repair in Development, Production and Support

Intrinsically everyone knows that the diagnostics and repair processes in any operation are a large area of inefficiencies for labor, material, time and other resources, ultimately leading to higher costs in some way, whether higher cost products, delayed deliveries, increase spares or other attributes. But with all this understanding, programs continue to short change investments in diagnostic and repair development. This paper will explore different economic models for the diagnostics and repair processes in Development, Production and Support. It will include a look at the tradeoffs with elements like prognostics, built in self-test and automated diagnostics.