Scenario:
Two subsystems – 1) Guidance, Navigation & Control [flying correctly] and 2) Payload delivery [spraying correctly] have attempted to save costs by purchasing off-the-shelf hardware, rather than a custom design, resulting in both going over their originally allotted weight budgets. Each team has suggested that the OTHER team reduce weight to compensate.
  • The UAS will not be able to carry sufficient weight to spread the specified (Marketing has already talked this up to customers) amount of fertilizer over the specified area without cutting into the fuel margin. The safety engineers are uncomfortable with the idea of changing the fuel margin at all.


    • How would you go about fixing the problem?


    Solution:
    Both the Guidance, Navigation, Control team, and Payload delivery team need to draft up a new proposal on how much it would cost if they built their own units in house. Within the proposals I would have them provide options for construction outlines for the lightest possible components, as well as the minimum weight components needed to achieve flight dynamics by having the most cost effective budget.

                    Although it would be suggested that only one team would have change their component to achieve mission success, as a systems engineer, I would need to see all the available layouts and outlines to conclude the best option for moving forward on the project. At the end of the day, the physics of flight cannot be changed, but more money can be allotted an area of construction if the correct plans and blueprints matched the mission requirements.

                    Best case scenario, either the Guidance, Navigation, and Control team, or the Payload delivery team, would come up with a new outlines which would allow for in house construction of a component without passing the operational construction budget. In that case I would be an easy choice forward with only a minimum amount of rework added to the project.

                    The most likely scenario however, is that more money will have to be used in construction costs in order to achieve the proper specifications of. Luckily in this case, it is common for front runner development projects to have Total Variable Costs built into the budget (Economics Online, 2017).  In this case, adjustments in the developing budget can be counter balanced by raising the price of the products on the consumer end. This is common in newly develop products, as the final cost of the product is made in accordance with the final production costs, and a higher end product would indeed have more market value.  In this case, the marking team would have to advertise as such, pushing the products as a one of a kind unique design, supporting new technologies in payload operations and guidance navigation systems.

                    If the company decided that they would not raise the construction budget for the needed components, then an extended research and development time would have to be applied for. Here more research into new technologies and systems would need to be conducted, in order to provide a proper design that works. This would obviously entail a delay of the product entering the market, and would be a loss in constructions costs of what has already been achieved in development.

     

    References

    Economics Online. (March, 2017). Cost of production: Fix and variable costs. Retrieved from http://economicsonline.co.uk/Business_economics/Costs.html.

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