Operation and maintenance support resources forecast model based on support activity flow

In order to resolve the problems encountered in the process of forecasting the quantity of the operation and maintenance support resources (including spare parts, manpower personals, support equipments and tools and other support resources) during the product´s design and development phase, including the difficulty to collect the input data of the forecast models and their imprecise and unauthentic output results, a forecast model was established on the basis of the functional flow diagrams of the support system, which used the data of product´s supportability analysis and the data of support system modeling during the design and development phase as input and presented a bottom-up approach to sum the support resources´ requirements by calculating the total requirements for the resources of the support activities in the same level of the functional flow diagrams, which considered the support activities´ flow and the characteristics of support resources being consumed or just occupied in product´s operation and maintenance activities. The support activities flow was described by the logic relations of the functional flow diagrams. At last, the proposed model was demonstrated via a practical case of aircraft, which proved that the model is corrective and effective.