It is generally acknowledged that most of the cost of a product is locked in by the early engineering design decisions. This means that the early decision process should consider cost as well as technical alternatives. The lack of product definition early in the concept stage precludes a credible conventional cost estimate. Model calculates costs, cost effectiveness, and operational availability at the system, subsystem, assembly, and sub-assembly levels. This coupling provides a system level trade-off capability to effectively determine hardware life cycle costs during early stages of hardware designs.
Additional relationships provide systems engineering, project management, and data costs.