MAJOR AIRCRAFT PROGRAM

Leaders of complex programs need to analyze and understand strategic trade-offs when making important decisions. There is a lot of detailed analysis to address the many elements of a large program, but it is also important to be able to conduct rigorous program-level strategic analysis. Sage provided this crucial capability to help leaders of a major aircraft program with multiple customers and thousands of suppliers across a global enterprise make key decisions and adapt to change with speed and rigor.

Decisions in development have big impacts across the lifecycle. To capture this, Sage extended their Program Simulation Modeling capability to cover the full lifecycle and the cause-effect dynamics over time. This enabled rapid strategic analysis capturing how changes or decisions would impact development, production, and sustainment. This strategic-level view was supplemented with an ability to drill-down into key parts of the program to assess critical details. Program leaders could be more decisive despite the complexity, as they considered both the near and long-term impacts of major decisions.

Major programs are full of change and uncertainty. With this integrated strategic analysis capability the program was able to rapidly examine the consequences of more risks and more courses of action, rapidly, to support better decision-making and strategic risk management. The program was able to assess how decisions or potential changes would impact the program across the lifecycle and use that insight to design effective, executable improvements. The drill-down capability also enabled rapid examination of the key details that needed to be managed most closely for success.

As conditions changed and priorities shifted, this strategic analysis capability helped leadership act faster and anticipate or respond rapidly to change. There was great complexity to dynamically balance operational demands, schedules, technical details, and budgets across multiple customers. Sage’s tailored strategic analysis models and focused drill-downs helped the leadership team continually adapt to a highly dynamic environment and drive the most effective improvements for changing circumstances.

“[Sage’s] team of professionals has displayed exceptional expertise, innovative management techniques, and individual initiative to identify and prioritize management challenges and devise workable solutions to optimize our development. [Sage is helping to guide] executive level decisions in the management of this multi-billion dollar development program.”

-Program PEO