In addition to DoD Instruction 5000.91 Product Support Management for the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, the DoD Product Support Manager Guidebook, the RAM-C Report Manual, the Condition-Based Maintenance-Plus Guidebook, and MIL-HDBK-502A Product Support Analysis, permit me to share a few recent videos and articles emphasizing the importance of the topic of designing for supportability and the lash-up between Systems Engineering/Sustaining Engineering and Life Cycle Logistics/Product Support/Sustainment, including:

• Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment “Perspective of the Senior Leader” Video
• Principal Deputy, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment (Video; starting at 5:20)
• “Product Support: The Key to Warfighter Readiness” Article by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Product Support
• “Systems Engineering and Life Cycle Sustainment: The Need to Synchronize” Article”
• “Product Support Lessons from an Aircraft Maintenance Officer” Article
• “Designing for Weapons Maintainability: A Necessity for Increasingly Complex Technology” Article
• “Under the Product Support Umbrella: 10 Foundational Enablers of Affordable Readiness” Article
• “RAM Requirements in New DoD Product Support Policy” DAU LOG Blog Post
• Foundational Nature of Supportability Analysis in DoD DAU LOG Blog post.
• While not quite as recent, a 2013 article entitled “The Imperative of Aligning Systems Engineering and Life Cycle Logistics”

And, of course, your DAU colleagues also offer a range of training courses and other learning assets to assist you in better understanding the importance of this topic as well, including:

• CLCL 005 Supportability & Design Interface Credential
• CLCL 006 Designing Supportable Systems Credential
• CLCL 007 Product Support Analysis Credential
• LOG 104 Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM)
• LOG 211V Supportability Analysis
• LOG 0080 Designing for Supportability in DoD Systems
• LOG 0120 Supportability Analysis Fundamentals
• LOG 0570 Level of Repair Analysis (LORA)
• Product Support Analysis (PSA) ACQuipedia Article

As a sidenote for those who might be wondering about the image accompanying this blog post, it depicts driving Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) into system design while driving ownership costs out!