Many projects and systems use Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) components (both hardware and software) within them.  While COTS components have been widely expected to provide significant cost savings, there are hidden costs that must be understood, the most significant is the costs due to continual changes and upgrading of commercial components.

More management at the system level is required to accommodate component evaluation and selection and deal with technical, business, and requirements trade-offs. The entire development life cycle has to be modified to address issues, such as component evaluation, and the constant change in technology, which the use of commercial components requires, throughout system development and sustainment.

During this course we will examine impact of COTS on system lifecycle and also look at one major disadvantage of using COTS in detail – Issue of Obsolescence.   Utilising COTS solutions significantly increases the obsolescence risk to a project.  This result in the requirement for a robust Obsolescence Management framework to be developed to understand, identify and mitigate this risk.  This course will look in detail on how to reduce this risk by implementing pro-active Obsolescence Management strategies, plans and processes.

Stuart Kelly
Director
Through Life Support Limited

As a Director at Through Life Support Limited, Mr Kelly is focused on providing expert advice and guidance to assist projects and companies to implement, or improve existing Obsolescence Management strategies. He also offers similar assistance to develop a company’s capability in the Through Life Management Plan (TLMP), Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) and Supportability Engineering disciplines.
 
He has over 27 years of experience supporting projects within the Ministry of Defence. This included working in various ILS disciplines and most recently spent several years as the MOD Subject Matter Expert for Obsolescence Management (OM).
 
Mr Kelly had the responsibility for OM policy across all UK MOD projects. It was his responsibility to ensure that MOD policy was robust so that all Projects had the correct framework to deliver an efficient OM strategy. He also provided the advice and guidance needed to implement proactive OM strategies and was responsible for providing this advice and guidance to over 200 projects.

This course is especially recommended for Directors, Heads of Department, Staff Officers, and Managers responsible for:

COTS

Systems Maintenance

Obsolescence Management

Material Planning

Logistics Systems Management

Strategic Planning

Quality Assurance

Inventory Management

Also recommended for Relevant Organisations:

Ministry of Defence

Ministry of Home Affairs

Defence Acquisition Agencies

All government bodies dealing with COTS

All industries dealing with COTS

For more information about the event, please contact +65 6732 0522 or email marketing@k2bdefence.com