Multi-Stakeholder Dynamic Optimization for System of Systems Acquisition

The crucial role of System of Systems (SoS) acquisition, in which multiple distributed systems that can (and do) operate independently assemble in networks and collaborate to achieve unique capabilities [1], has been increasingly recognized by various organizations and communities. The prevalence of SoS in acquisition community is a direct result of the severe acquisition failures in the past, including performance degradation, schedule / cost overrun, program cancellation and so on. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that 39 percent of fiscal 2012 programs have had over 25 percent unit cost growth [2]; the total cost of the 2013 portfolio has increased by nearly $448 billion with an average delay of 28 months in operating capability compared to first full estimates [3]. Particularly, prior SoS acquisition efforts in military context such as U.S. Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) [4] and U.S. Coast Guard’s Integrated Deepwater System [5], have failed due to both technology and management challenges that in turn led to cost and schedule overrun. The acquisition challenges faced by France, United Kingdom and Germany are similar to the challenges faced by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) [6]. DeLaurentis and Ghose [1] summarized seven common causes of failure within SoS acquisition processes, such as misalignment of objectives among the systems, limited span of control of the SoS engineer on the component systems of the SoS, and evolution of the SoS, to name a few. These issues prompted the development of the Systems Engineering (SE) Guide for SoS [7] and subsequent “Wave” model [8] to provide procedural support for effective SoS acquisition and evolution. However, these qualitative guides to SoS architecting needs quantitative methods that can provide straightforward and adequate decision support to decision makers.